The Art of Working Backwards
by Dust to Dusk
Summary: AU Namine has lost her heart. Everyone else has forgotten her. Unable to linger in the Realm of Light, how can she possibly retrieve it?
1. Introduction: Start at the End

AN: You'll quickly notice that this fic is slightly AU. There are no such things as nobodies, although many characters who were nobodies will be present. Ansem/Xehanort's Heartless will probably not come into play, but who knows? I have a concept of where this story is going, but nothing is set in stone. There will be some romance. As far as I know, the pairings will be Riku/Namine, Sora/Kairi, and a bit of Axel/Roxas.

As for the formalities: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. This work earns me no profit aside from my own enjoyment.

~*~

~*The Art of Working Backwards*~

Introduction – We'll Start at the End to Begin Again

The realm of darkness was not always the featureless void that denizens of the light pictured it to be. A world unto itself, it possessed moonlit beaches, shadowed forests, and fathomless caves. Feral heartless scrambled, slithered, and swum through the endless nightscape, at home in the dark.

'A nightmare or a haven,' Namine mused. 'Whether it's one or the other is only a matter of perspective.'

She sat on the bare ground at the base of a dark, twisted tree, her form a surreal spot of white on the eerie nightscape. Ahead of her the barren ground came to an abrupt edge, dropping off into the sea. Behind her the wasteland rolled out, barren and empty, until transforming into the jagged teeth of a mountain range that sharply defined the horizon. There were no stars in the blue-black sky, only a moon that hung low over the water like a perpetually setting sun.

This was a quiet corner of the realm of darkness. It was here that Namine came to find peace. The only sounds in the seemingly empty world were the distant sighing of the waves on the shore and the light scratch of Namine's pencil on the last page of her care-worn sketchbook. Yet a glance upward revealed a bat-like heartless hanging above her in the tree by its hooked tail. Namine smiled to herself and added the creature to her drawing.

The heartless would not bother her. They had no reason to. Why attack something that posed no threat? Something that did not even possess a heart to devour?

Namine stopped drawing. Lifting her pencil, she looked over the completed sketch, assessing it. After a long moment, she closed the book and slipped both it and her pencils into the simple bag at her side. Standing, she shouldered the bag's strap and took three short steps to the edge of the cliff.

Well over a hundred feet below, the water shimmered darkly. Not for the first time, Namine wondered how deep the oil-black ocean truly was. On Destiny Island, the water had been so clear that one could see the sandy bottom at depths of almost thirty feet.

Namine shook the memory from her mind. This was no time for nostalgia, not when there was work to be done. Now that she had reached the end of her story, she was finally ready to begin.

Raising a hand, Namine summoned a portal of swirling darkness right in front of her on the very edge between land and void. Without hesitation she stepped into the darkness, and the portal shrank to nothing behind her.

~*~

AN: Future chapters will be longer. ^_^ I hope you enjoyed it, and that you will review.


	2. Part 1: Forgotten

AN: I got this done sooner than expected. I have a hard time writing large numbers of characters at once. I work better when I only have to worry about a few. Hopefully, I've coordinated everyone in a readable and coherent manner. In the event that any of my readers are on the lookout for new music, I recommend looking up It's the Fear by Within Temptation on YouTube. It's Namine's theme song for this story.

~*~

~*The Art of Working Backwards*~

Part 1 – Forgotten

Riku was laying back on one of the compact beds on the gummi ship, one hand behind his head, the other dangling a mysterious charm above him. It was a small, palm-sized star on a chain. Made of some light metal – tin, maybe? – and painted gold, it looked more like a cheap Christmas decoration than anything else. For the life of him, Riku couldn't remember where he'd gotten it. He'd had it for a while – the whole time he and Sora had been out exploring the worlds, in fact. Had he found it, bought it, stolen it, received it as a gift?

"That charm must be really important to you."

Riku looked up and saw Kairi sitting on the other bed across the tiny room, watching him interestedly. She was one of several friends he and Sora had made on their journey. A Princess of Heart, Kairi had joined them in Traverse Town, the first world they'd washed up on after their island was engulfed in darkness.

"I guess." Riku gave the chain a light tug, jerking the star up into his hand. "But if it's so important to me, then why can't I remember where I got it?"

"Maybe you found it when you were little," Kairi suggested. Riku shook his head.

"I didn't have it when we were on the Islands, only after we left." Riku sighed and sat up, slipping the charm into his pocket. "Whatever. We should probably go make sure those three clowns don't steer us into an asteroid field. Again."

Kairi giggled. "That was just because Donald was fighting with Goofy instead of watching where he was going. Sora's flying right now."

"What a relief," Riku replied sarcastically. Kairi rolled her eyes. Although Sora tended to be distractible, he was a surprisingly dexterous and attentive pilot. Of course, that never stopped Riku from ribbing him about his occasional slip-ups.

Kairi followed Riku as he strode into the cockpit. Ignoring Donald and Goofy, who were fervently pointing out every hazard in the ship's path, real or imagined, Riku placed a hand on the back of the pilot seat and leaned forward over Sora's shoulder to glance at the instruments on the control panel.

"So, how much longer to Traverse Town?" he asked, interrupting Donald's hysteria as Sora easily steered between a pair of large, pitted chunks of space debris.

"It should be less than an hour if everybody just lets me drive," Sora replied grumpily. Riku suppressed a laugh. It was rare to see cheerful, enthusiastic Sora in a bad mood, which was just as well since he really couldn't pull one off properly. His frowns, like the one he currently wore, always came out as pouts. Maybe that was part of why Riku enjoyed teasing him so much.

"We would let you drive if you hadn't almost crashed the ship!" Donald sputtered furiously.

"I did not!" Sora protested. "I was just… cutting it close a little."

"You scratched the paint."

"Gawrsh, Donald, I thought Sora was doing just fine," Goofy commented peaceably.

"Then why do you keep pointing stuff out for me, too?" Sora asked.

"Well, I figured that if Donald was gonna do it he'd need some help seeing as how he can't quite reach the top of the screen."

"Guys, why don't you go rest in the back until we get there?" Kairi suggested, playing the voice of reason even as she smothered her own amused giggles. "Riku and I can keep an eye on Sora, even if he doesn't need it." This last part, added for Sora's benefit, immediately changed the boy's expression into a broad grin.

"You mean that, Kairi?" Sora asked as the dog and duck retired to the back of the ship.

"Of course I do," Kairi assured him, moving up to stand beside him. "You've only been doing this for a few months, and look how good you've already gotten!"

Riku smirked at Sora's light blush.

"Heh. You two want me to go to the back of the ship, too?" he asked teasingly.

"Riku!" two voices, Sora's embarrassed and Kairi's annoyed, exclaimed.

"What? A guy can't make a joke around here?" Riku asked, grinning unrepentantly. The ship jerked suddenly, throwing off his balance so he pitched forward against the display screen.

"Whoops, sorry Riku." Sora grinned. "I guess I didn't see that pocket of space dust."

Kairi tried to muffle a giggle and look disapproving, but was failing miserably on both counts. Although Sora's form blocked his line of sight, Riku had the distinct impression that Sora was holding Kairi's hand to keep her from meeting the same undignified fate as himself.

'Space dust, my ass.'

~*~

"Hi, guys!" Sora greeted enthusiastically, bursting in through the door of Cid's item shop ahead of his friends. "We're… back? Umm, hey, what's going on? You guys moving?"

The question was well-merited. All around Cid's normally immaculate shop, cardboard boxes were piled and strewn. The once-stocked shelves were almost bare and several of the shelving units were in the process of being disassembled. Under Aerith's careful supervision, Leon was standing on a stool to take down the top shelf of one such unit. Both looked over towards the door at the disturbance. Aerith smiled at the group; Leon merely grunted and stepped down, inclining his head respectfully towards Kairi who smiled and hurried forward.

"Welcome back!" Aerith greeted brightly, catching Kairi in a hug. "And yes, actually."

"Where are you going?" Kairi asked, looking up at her surrogate mother concernedly.

Leon stepped out from behind the counter to stand beside Aerith, ruffling Kairi's hair with filial affection. "Once we got your message saying you defeated Maleficent at Hollow Bastion, we all agreed that we wanted to try to move back there and rebuild the town."

"Really?" Kairi grinned, her tone making her excitement obvious.

"That's great!" Sora enthused. Riku suspected he was only excited because he saw how thrilled Kairi was.

"Do you need any help?" Kairi let go of Aerith and looked past her to the piles of boxes and accessories waiting to be packed. Aerith smiled and opened her mouth to reply, but was cut off abruptly by a crash and a torrent of furious curses from the back room. Seconds later, Cid came stomping out with a bouncing Yuffie at his heels.

"Oh, come on, old man! It's not my fault that box fell. Besides, don't you have, like, a bajillion more teacups stashed around here?"

"Old man?! Listen here, you da-"

"Cid!" Aerith's sharp, scolding tone put a preemptive halt to Cid's impending swearing session. "Please! We have guests."

"Eh?" Cid finally looked around, noticing the newcomers. "So, the rug-rat princess and her friends are back. S'about time!"

"I missed you, too, Uncle Cid." Kairi grinned knowingly. She'd been living with Cid and the others since the heartless had taken over Radiant Garden and they'd fled the dying world on Cid's ship. It was so long ago that Kairi could hardly remember it, leaving the other survivors of the fallen world as the only family she'd ever really known.

"Oh!" Aerith exclaimed, as if she'd suddenly recalled something important. "That reminds me: did you ever find your friend?"

"Huh?" Sora looked at her, completely confused. "What friend?" Behind him, Riku frowned. He couldn't remember looking for any friend, but for some reason the question still set off a pang in his heart.

"That's right," Leon said, Aerith's comment sparking his own memory. "When you two first came here, you were looking for someone. You were expecting to find them when you fought Maleficent."

"But… I don't remember any of that," Sora insisted.

Riku crossed his arms. "Are you guys sure you aren't confused?"

"Very sure." Leon glared slightly at the suggestion.

"Why don't we worry about that later?" Aerith suggested, ever the peacemaker. "While the rest of you work on packing, I'll fix something for supper. You five must be hungry after so much travel."

"Yes ma'am!" came the simultaneous, enthusiastic response from Sora, Donald, and Goofy. Riku rolled his eyes at their eagerness. However, an insistent grumble from his stomach ruined his attempt to appear dignified. Catching a knowing smirk from Kairi, he "hmph"-ed and averted his gaze.

"I'll help," Leon volunteered. "I'll let you guys wrestle with the shelves for while. I've already put in my time."

"I get dibs on clearing the high shelves!" Yuffie insisted, bouncing up to Kairi and slinging an arm over her friend's shoulders. "I _am_ the Great Ninja Yuffie, after all! I won't even need a stool."

"Yeah, and she'll break at least half of everything she gets her hands on," Cid grumbled.

"Hey!"

Thanks to – or perhaps in spite of – all the hands at work, packing went fairly smoothly. Everyone worked and chatted until late that night, stopping periodically for food and conversation. When everyone finally headed off to bed, Kairi went up to share Aerith's room while Sora and Riku made themselves comfortable with some spare blankets on the floor amid piles of packed boxes. Donald had insisted that he and Goofy spend the night in the gummi ship in case they received a transmission from the King. Although they had defeated Maleficent, the supposed source of all the trouble with the heartless, the King had yet to make an appearance.

Lying awake, Riku could hear Sora shifting around in his half-asleep search for the perfect position. Once more, Riku had taken out the little star charm and was staring at it as it spun slowly on the end of its chain, reflecting the soft, orange light from the street lamps that filtered in through the windows. A sudden, seemingly random thought occurred to him.

"Hey, Sora?" he called quietly.

"Hmm?" came the muffled response.

Riku continued to stare at the star. "Do you remember that girl who washed up on Destiny Islands when we were kids?"

"Girl?" Sora mumbled in response. "Oh, right. I guess I forgot about her." For a moment there was silence. "What ever happened to her?"

"Not a clue," Riku said, still staring at the star. He hadn't thought about that girl in forever. Why would he now? "It's not important. Go to sleep. We've got a busy day tomorrow."

Sora made a tired noise of agreement and rolled over on his side. Riku did the same and soon fell asleep, dreaming unusual dreams of his home on the islands and a haunting, anonymous smile.

~*~

Namine stepped out of the all-consuming darkness of the starless night into the far gentler darkness of Cid's accessory shop. In the comfortable dimness, Namine saw her two best friends asleep amid a tangle of blankets. She watched them quietly for a moment with a bittersweet smile. The pain was strong, but mercifully distant: a dislocated emotion.

Taking a quiet step forward, Namine spotted the charm, clutched loosely in Riku's unconscious grip. A sob welled up in her chest, and she could not suppress the quiet, involuntary choking sound she made as she quashed it. Even if the emotions were distant, her body felt compelled to respond to them.

Steeling herself, she continued forward. She knelt by Riku's side, pulling a folded piece of paper with a tattered edge from her bag. She placed it by Riku's hand and, on impulse, took the star from Riku's lax grip and placed it on top of the folded paper.

Forcing herself to rise, Namine turned and headed back towards her still-open portal. She paused in front of it, however, struck by the urge to linger with the boys who had been her lifelong best friends. However, her small hands clenched into determined fists, and she stepped resolutely through the portal, closing it behind her before she could change her mind.

Again, she was standing alone in the midst of the increasingly-familiar waste of the realm of darkness – her tree ahead of her, a several hundred foot drop to the midnight ocean behind her. She gave a sigh of resignation.

While in the realm of light, she had felt the beginnings of the same impulses that moved the heartless: the knowledge of one's own emptiness and the insatiable desire to fill it by taking the hearts of others. Namine had suspected as much, but her brief sojourn had made it painfully clear.

She was no longer a being of the realm of light.

~*~

_Flashback_

~*~

"_Come on, Namine! Let me see!" Sora pouted as Namine clutched her sketchbook to her chest. Namine shook her head. She was wearing her favorite white sundress, sitting beneath the shade of a leafy palm tree as the tropical sun beat down._

"_No! You'll see it when it's finished."_

"_But you've been working on that drawing forever!"_

"_Leave her alone, Sora," Riku intervened, walking over with his wooden sword in hand. "You know how she is when she gets a new sketchbook. She thinks the first drawing has to be perfect or something."_

"_Well, it is the first one you see when you look through it," Namine defended. "It should at least look like I put some effort into it!"_

"_Right, right." Riku smirked, redirecting his gaze to Sora. "Hey, are we going to fight or not?"_

"_Oh, right!" Sora moved away from Namine abruptly, grabbing his own sword from where he'd dropped it in the sand. "What does the winner get this time?"_

"_How about the first look at Namine's drawing?" Riku suggested, glancing over at Namine for confirmation._

"_When it's done," Namine consented, hiding an amused smile by looking down at her work._

"_You're on!" Sora grinned._

_Riku won._


	3. Part 2: All That's Left

AN: Editing is a pain. Consistency is a pain. Writing unfamiliar characters is a pain. Strategic plotting to make everything actually fit together is a HUGE pain.

I'm such a masochist. XD

~*~

~*The Art of Working Backwards*~

Part 2 – All That's Left

The quiet clatter of dishes and the smell of bacon cooking woke Riku the next morning. Aerith was making breakfast, he assumed, sitting up with a yawn. The bright yellow of the little star charm immediately caught his eyes. He blinked and frowned to himself in sleepy confusion when he saw the folded paper pinned beneath it. He glanced over at Sora, still deep asleep and sprawled across his blankets, and then towards the kitchen where he could now hear Aerith humming softly beneath the sizzle of fat on the griddle. The note – for he assumed that's what it was – certainly hadn't been there the night before.

Riku shrugged to himself and slipped the note out from under the charm. Whoever wrote it had probably signed it anyway. Unfolding the paper, Riku was surprised to find, not a note, but a drawing. More startling, the drawing was of him and Sora back on the islands with some other girl he didn't recognize. They were sitting on the bent-over paopu tree on the little island where he and Sora had always gone to play. Well, actually Sora and the girl were sitting on the tree while Riku leaned against it. The image was a perfect reproduction of how the boys had watched the sunset on those evenings, right down to how Sora leaned against the trunk where it curved upwards and the way Riku crossed his arms over his chest. The only thing out of place was the girl.

She sat up between them on the tree, neither leaning nor slouching. Her hair was pale blonde while her eyes were a surprisingly intense shade of blue. Riku glanced again at Sora. Unless his friend had been hiding some serious artistic talent from him all these years, there was no way this was Sora's handiwork. Riku absentmindedly pocketed the star charm and stood up, heading for the kitchen. Navigating around the boxes, he made his way behind the counter to a door that led to the kitchen-slash-dining room.

"Good morning, Aerith," he greeted, running a free hand through his silver hair to settle a few stray strands into place.

"Good morning, Riku!" Aerith replied cheerfully, turning away from her cooking long enough to toss him a bright smile. "You woke up right on time. Would you mind helping me set the table? We already packed most of the dishes, but I set a few aside by the sink for breakfast."

"Sure." Riku walked into the kitchen, but stopped short of the waiting dishes. "Hey Aerith?"

"Hm?"

"Did you put this by my pallet last night?"

Aerith looked away from the skillet to see the drawing Riku held up for her inspection. She shook her head.

"No, but it is a very nice drawing. Do you think Sora did it?"

Riku snorted. "Not a chance!" He folded the picture carefully along the same lines as before and put it in his pocket. "Sora's lucky if he can draw stick figures."

"Hmm..." Aerith mused, moving the skillet with the fully-cooked bacon and eggs to a cool burner. "Well, I don't think anyone here is much of an artist. How strange. Who was that girl? The one between you and Sora?"

"I don't know," Riku confessed, grabbing a stack of plates and silverware. "I've never seen her before in my life."

~*~

After breakfast, the last of the dishes were washed and packed away into the two ships, along with everything else. Riku didn't mention the picture again, or even bother to ask anyone else about it. He had a pretty good idea what responses he'd get. However, Riku had little trouble distracting himself from the bothersome mystery within the chaos of packing and getting underway in the midst of the bustle to grab last-minute necessities and Yuffie's assorted stunts on the conveniently piled boxes.

It was Riku's turn to fly the gummi ship, leading the two-ship convoy back to Hollow Bastion. He always enjoyed piloting. It kept his mind occupied with a familiar, straight-forward challenge that he could enjoy and excel at. Under Riku's command, the smaller, more maneuverable gummi ship cleared the way of debris while Cid's ship followed, carrying the bulk of the boxes. The way was relatively clear from their earlier passage, but in the several days it had taken to travel from Hollow Bastion to Traverse Town a few asteroids and odd bits of debris had managed to drift in to impede them.

With quick reflexes and a steady hand, Riku had little trouble with the obstacles. He smirked to himself as a particularly large chunk of rock was reduced to dust and vapor. His skills were something he took no small amount of pride in. Sora was, admittedly, the better pilot when it came to maneuvering, but Riku held unquestionable mastery over the weapons system.

The sound of steps behind him alerted him to another's presence. He knew without looking that it was Sora. The gait was too even to belong to either Donald or Goofy, and the footfalls were too heavy to belong to Kairi.

"How's it going?" Sora asked, the voice confirming Riku's assumption.

"Kinda boring," Riku said. "You must have cleared out all the interesting stuff last time we passed through here."

"Guess so..."

Riku sighed at the tone. "Alright, Sora, what's wrong?"

"Well, I've been wondering..." Sora stepped forward to stand by the pilot's seat. "What do we do now? I mean, we beat Maleficent, right? Shouldn't things have gone back to normal?"

Riku's stomach clenched, although his expression remained unchanged. He knew that Sora was referring specifically to Destiny Islands. After defeating Maleficent, they'd returned to the gummi ship and checked its sensors, searching for some trace of their home world. Nothing. Although he and Sora hadn't had a chance to revisit any of the other worlds they'd explored yet the lack of change on the sensors made Riku strongly suspected that the heartless were still roaming about.

"After we're done helping Leon and the others get settled, we'll keep looking for the King with Donald and Goofy," Riku said, sounding far surer than he felt. "Those two claim he'll know what's going on. So, he's the one we need to see."

"Do you really think he'll be able to help us?" Sora asked, looking for reassurance that Riku wasn't sure he could give.

"Probably," he replied offhandedly. "Even if he can't, we'll just keep looking until we find someone who can."

"Well, I hope we find him soon." Sora leaned against the side of the large captain's chair, watching the stars fly past on the view screen. "I'd at least like to know our island is alright."

Riku said nothing, though on the inside he agreed.

~*~

_Flashback_

~*~

_Namine's head pounded as she came painfully awake. The ground beneath her was cold and hard, like stone instead of familiar sand. An odd rushing noise, like the continuous crashing of a waterfall, filled her ears. She opened her eyes slowly._

_Since when did water flow up?_

_Squeezing her eyes shut, she pushed herself up on her hands and knees before opening them again. The world she saw was unfamiliar and utterly strange. All around her, the walls of a canyon arched up, every inch of the stone surface covered by a waterfall crashing impossibly upwards over the edge. More disturbingly, the stone surface on which she knelt was merely an island of land no larger than a coffee table, floating in mid-air. Around her, similar small islands hung in suspended animation, like fragments of some shattered planet floating in space._

_As she lifted her gaze, her breath caught in her throat. Above the lip of the chasm directly ahead of her, a giant structure loomed against the dusky sky. With warped, twisting towers and oddly-angled walls, the castle was endowed with the most bizarre and impossible architecture she'd ever seen. She was so busy taking in the strange site that she entirely missed the growing pool of shadow forming on another floating stone island behind her._

"_Poor, sweet child!"_

_Startled, Namine gasped and whirled around to face the source of the voice. There stood a tall, pale-featured woman, dressed from head to toe in black robes crowned with a pair of horns._

"_Are you lost?"_

_For a moment, Namine's voice caught in her throat. She swallowed thickly. In spite of the strange woman's intimidating appearance, her tone was sweet and oddly enchanting._

"_I-I think so," Namine managed, pushing herself shakily to her feet. "H-have... Have you seen my friends? Th-there were two of them, two boys."_

_The woman shook her head. "I'm afraid not, my dear. You are the only one to have passed through this world in recent days. But perhaps..." she continued at Namine's crestfallen appearance, "we can help each other. I sense a great power lying untapped within you. If you help me with my little projects, maybe I could help you find these missing friends of yours."_

"_You c-could do that?" Namine asked hopefully. "I don't think I have any powers, but... but if you'd really help me find them, I could still try to help you."_

_The tall woman gave a poisoned-honey smile. "Wonderful, my dear! Now, what might your name be?"_

"_Namine," she replied, gaining confidence from the woman's kind tone. "My name is Namine."_

"_How wonderful to meet you, Namine." The woman's smile grew. "I am Maleficent."_

~*~

Namine sat quietly beneath her twisted tree in Starless Night, her eyes closed in reflection. Not sleep. She had stopped trying to sleep several days after she'd lost her heart. Since that day, something within her had changed. She felt neither hunger nor thirst, and even the cold of the realm of darkness that had once seemed uncomfortably chilly now left her unaffected.

By now, she'd realized that her transformation wasn't happening nearly as fast as she'd expected. She imagined that it was because her heart still existed, even if it no longer resided within her. Faintly, she could feel the thread that connected her to it, but the thread was too thin for her to discover where it was, and it grew frailer by the day.

Namine raised a hand, placing it over her chest where her heart should have rested. Without looking beneath the thin, white fabric of her dress she could envision the black spot that had formed on her skin. Not long after losing her heart, she'd felt something strange there, a spot of cold numbness. A quick look had revealed that a small, fingerprint-sized patch of skin had lost its color entirely, turning the same light-swallowing shade of black as the heartless.

She didn't have to take a second look to know it had spread.

In retrospect, a sudden change would have been merciful. One minute she would have been herself, the next, she would have been a heartless, unable to care about who or what she had been. But, no. Namine was changing slowly, agonizingly aware of the monster she was becoming and the humanity she was losing. The hand over her chest clenched into a small fist.

She'd already felt the first stirrings of hunger. It wasn't the familiar hunger for food or affection, but a deep, desperate hunger for light – for hearts. So far, she'd been able to deny it easily enough, but it was growing stronger. It had grown when she briefly visited the realm of light. She had expected it to wane upon her return to the darkness, but apparently, things didn't work like that.

Namine took a deep, steadying breath and exhaled sharply. She would have to be very careful. She would bide her time here in the darkness where there were no innocents to tempt her. She would continue to work to repair Riku's and Sora's memories, being careful not to expend too much energy. That would be the trick: working quickly enough to outpace her transformation while keeping her energy expenditure low enough to prevent the light-hunger from growing too strong. It wouldn't be easy, but she had to try. She did not like to consider the consequences of failure.

~*~

AN: Gah. The biggest challenge by far with all this is simply deciding how much information to release at a time. What should be withheld? What should be stated explicitly? What should be left implied? Tricky, tricky... Anyway, please review! I can always use ideas of how to improve story structure, and reviews motivate me to write quicker. It's always nice to know someone's looking forward to seeing your work.


	4. Part 3: Half Familiar

AN: Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone! ^_^ This was a stubborn chapter. It just didn't want to be written. Many thanks to LarkaSpirit and TheMagicalTapeworm for giving me the motivation to crank this sucker out.

~*~

~*The Art of Working Backwards*~

Part 3 – Half-Familiar

Riku knew he was dreaming. How else would he suddenly find himself standing on the familiar beach where he and his friends had so often played? It was strangely quiet. No birds were singing, and the sighing of the waves was oddly distant. Down the beach, he could see the girl from the drawing standing alone and unmoving, staring at the metronome-constant waves.

Riku opened his mouth, but no sound came out. The girl seemed to hear him anyway and turned to face him.

"_Don't worry._"

Somehow Riku knew this was the girl's voice, although the sound radiated from the dreamscape itself and her mouth never moved. She gave him an oddly familiar smile. With her pale clothing and form, she looked more like some beautiful apparition than a person of flesh and blood.

"_You'll understand soon. I promise._"

The ambient light grew brighter, blurring color and detail. Against a background of white sand and blinding light, the pale girl faded entirely from view.

~*~

The next day, Riku took a break from piloting and let Sora have the helm. He had declined a game of Go Fish with Goofy, Donald, and Kairi and sat alone at the back of the ship, staring at the mysterious drawing of Sora, the girl, and himself.

Namine. That was her name. He'd known her back on the islands; he must have. Yet he couldn't recall ever playing with her or even seeing her around. Even people-oriented Sora didn't seem to remember her. At the same time, Riku was certain she had been important to him. There was more that he'd forgotten. It was obvious, and the absence of memory was a torment. He sighed in frustration and let his head fall back against the metal wall.

"Hey, Riku."

Riku looked up at the familiar voice. "Hey, Kairi. What's up?"

"Nothing much." She sat down beside him with familiar ease. Sometimes it surprised Riku how easily Kairi had inserted herself into his and Sora's lives. Riku didn't usually take kindly to people trying to cut in on his relationships. He admitted, if only to himself, that he was very possessive of those he cared for. Yet, it never felt like an intrusion with Kairi. She never came between him and Sora, simply complemented them.

"Has something been bothering you lately?"

She was also very perceptive.

Riku hesitated as he tried to decide how to answer. "It's nothing," he said finally.

"So, you've been moping around in the back of the ship all day over nothing?" Her eyes went to the unfamiliar picture he held in his hands. "What's that?"

"It was lying next to me when I woke up yesterday morning," Riku confessed, holding the paper up so she could see it better. "I haven't been able to figure out who put it there or even why they did it."

Kairi's gaze immediately zeroed in on Namine. "Is she another friend of yours? From Destiny Islands?"

"I think so," Riku said, turning the picture back towards himself, as if hoping to glean more from the pencil-strokes. "I don't remember much about her, just her name and what she looks like. Until today, I didn't even remember that much."

"Do you think it's because of the picture?" Kairi asked. "Seeing it might have helped you remember her."

"I guess so."

"What's her name?"

"Namine." He pronounced the syllables almost reverently. They felt familiar on his lips even though this was the first time he could remember saying the name aloud. It took him a moment to realize Kairi had gone wide-eyed and still.

"What is it?"

"Riku, was Namine born on the islands?" she asked carefully.

"I don't think so," Riku replied, watching Kairi curiously. "She washed up on shore one day when we were little. No one could figure out who her parents were or where she came from, so the mayor and his wife took her in."

"May I?" Kairi held out a hand, and Riku passed the picture to her. He felt oddly uncomfortable letting anyone else hold it, but Kairi's touch was light as she looked searchingly at the picture. "Did I ever tell you and Sora about my twin?"

That caught Riku's attention. "No. I didn't know you had any siblings."

Kairi bit her lip. "I haven't thought about her in a long time. The last time I saw her was in Hollow Bastion, just before the heartless came."

Riku remained quiet, sensing she wasn't done talking. Kairi seemed unable to tear her gaze from the picture.

"There weren't many people who got away in time," she began, her voice far away. "It just happened too fast. My sister and I were playing hide and seek on the castle grounds when the heartless came. She was hiding and I was seeking. Cid and the others ran by the castle on their way to the hanger, and I was the only one they saw. I wanted to stop and go back to look for my sister, but there wasn't any time."

Riku was startled to see Kairi's eyes watering. He couldn't remember ever seeing the cheerful girl so upset.

"When we made it to Traverse Town," Kairi continued, "we had a small memorial service for everyone who didn't make it off the world, my sister included. Her name was Namine, too."

"You think they're...?"

"The same person?" Kairi finished, finally looking away from the image. "My sister gets left behind in a dying world and somehow manages to wash up on your world?" She gave a small, hopeful smile. "Stranger things have happened."

"Hey, guys!" Sora walked up with his usual cheerful greeting. "What are you two doing back here?"

"Don't worry, Sora. I'm not trying to steal your girlfriend." Riku grinned, using his teasing to help diffuse the serious atmosphere that Sora had unwittingly walked into. Sora flushed and was about to shoot back a protest when he noticed Kairi's teary expression.

"Kairi, are you okay?" Sora crouched down beside her, obviously concerned. "Hey, don't listen to Riku. He's just messing around."

Kairi shook her head. "It's not that." She turned the picture so Sora could see it. "Do you remember this girl?"

"Hmm... I don't think so." Sora shook his head. "Did you draw this, Kairi? It's really good."

"We don't know who drew it," Riku cut in. "I found it when I woke up yesterday morning. Do you remember when I asked you about the girl that washed up on our island a few nights ago?" At Sora's nod, he continued. "That's her. Her name is Namine. I think we knew her back on the islands."

"So... she drew the picture?" Sora asked, trying to make sense of the situation.

"Who knows?" Riku shrugged. "It's kind of weird, though. One day, we've never even heard of her, the next I start remembering all this stuff and pictures of her start showing up."

"That is weird." Sora agreed. "So, wait, why's Kairi upset?"

Kairi managed a smile. "It's nothing to worry about," she assured him. "I was just remembering things. Namine was my sister's name. We were twins. I lost her when the heartless took over Hollow Bastion."

"Which means there's a chance they're the same person," Riku finished.

"But if Namine was on the islands, where is she now?" Sora asked. "Do you think she made it off?"

"That's what we need to find out," Riku said.

"I'm sure she did," Namine asserted, smiling as she handed the drawing back to Riku. "If she made it away from Hollow Bastion when we were little, I'm sure she could have made it off the islands."

"Yeah, she must have!" Sora agreed optimistically.

"Let's hope so," Riku added, putting the picture away. The thought of the sweet, half-familiar girl lost in darkness twisted his stomach.

~*~

Namine couldn't say how long she'd been sitting beneath that same twisted tree in Starless Night, her mind running circles around itself trying to work out a decent solution to her problem. Restoring her friends' memories was taking too much time. By trial and error, she'd discovered that the restoration was easiest when the subject was asleep and their mind was already working on processing the person's memories. Even so, all she'd managed to accomplish in one night was to give Riku the most basic recollections of her name and face. By the time she was ready to move on to Sora, he was already waking up.

She was running out of time.

The strain was building, and at length, she decided that if any progress was to be made she needed to take a break first. A change of scenery was long overdue. She hesitated a moment before creating her portal. Making portals to travel through darkness took energy, and she wanted to conserve what she had. Still, she reminded herself, travel between worlds in the dark realm took less energy than traveling between darkness and light, and she desperately needed something to take her mind off her situation, if only temporarily. Visualizing another nearby world, she opened the desired portal and stepped through.

Here, in a world that Namine had dubbed the Black Forest, there was far more life than in the wasteland – if "life" was even the right way to describe it. This world was composed entirely of a dark forest, as dense as any jungle. Indeed, Namine knew from past experience that this world was the shadow of one where a jungle dominated the landscape. The oil-black trees grew tall with branches starting high off the ground. Some had massive trunks as thick as small houses, while others shot up like slender poles.

Vines hung down and crossed between trees, in some places creating a web-like tangle of black rope. Ape-like heartless leaped and scrambled through the vines, their glowing eyes their most visible feature. Over time, Namine had noticed that heartless tended to vary in appearance based on which world stood in opposition to their own. The small Shadows were almost universal, but the more powerful heartless seemed to take on forms unique to their worlds.

The ground was a tangle of roots, and Namine had to put aside her musings to watch her footing lest she should wrench and ankle, or even fall through one of the larger gaps. Every now and then, bright yellow eyes glinted up at her from the shadowy places beneath the roots, but those eyes held no terror for her anymore. All Namine had to focus on was picking her path over the trackless ground and betwixt and around the tangled vines and towering trees.

She had visited this world's twin in the realm of light before. It was a place full of life and strong light that filtered gently through a high, green canopy. She hadn't lingered there, though. By then, she'd been working for Maleficent, and there was no princess of heart in that world for the power-hungry woman to steal. Of course, back then Namine hadn't known what it was she was helping Maleficent collect. She'd assumed the sorceress simply needed plants, stones, or other items from different worlds for her spells. How naive...

Namine shook her head, and returned her attention to working her way over a particularly thick root in her way. She had no time to regret the past, a point made poignantly clear by the return of the same painful thoughts she had sought to escape. Every day, her connection to her heart weakened while her hunger for the hearts of others grew. She needed to restore Sora and Riku's memories at least enough for them to understand what had happened and how to help her. Up to this point, however, Namine's only experience was with breaking the chains of memory, not rebuilding them. She'd never realized how laborious a process it was.

"There has to be a way to do this faster," she murmured to herself, easing her way around one of the giant tree trunks. She'd come to a difficult patch where the roots lay further apart with some significantly higher or lower than others. A smile lit her face when she felt a vine lying against the trunk of the tree beneath her hand. She could pull it away from the trunk and use it for support as she moved over the difficult section of the forest.

A firm tug broke most of the tiny roots binding the vine to its host tree up to the level of Namine's shoulder. Pulling free the part of the vine extending above her head would have been quite a strain for her small form, but she noted that much of the vine's length fell below her level, lost between the gaps in the roots. If she could drag up the slack from below, she mused, she'd have a good, long tether for herself.

Pulling up the rest of the vine was more difficult than she'd expected. As the coils of shadowy plant matter collected near her feet, she began to understand why. The single vine she was pulling on was tangled up with a multitude of other vines that had fallen and dropped down beneath the floor of roots. As she pulled one vine up from the darkness others were dragged along with it, causing her once-small pile of usable vine to grow exponentially.

All at once, her solution clicked into place, and she dropped the vines abruptly. Of course! The chains of memory were just like the tangled vines, all interwoven and connected together. The memories she'd taken from her friends were like the fallen vines, lost and invisible beneath the tangle of roots – or deep within their own hearts. They couldn't simply reach in and get them themselves, but with the proper connection, they could haul out all kinds of associated memories on their own. All Namine would have to do would be to make that initial connection.

Her walk forgotten, Namine quickly opened a portal back to Starless Night. She had lots of work to do.

~*~

AN: As always, reviews are appreciated. The next chapter is in the works!


	5. Part 4: Carrying On

AN: Whoo! This one took a bit longer to put together and usual. I took the holidays off for myself, and then classes started up again. This chapter's a bit longer than usual, which I hope makes up for the delay. Hope you don't mind that I continue to improvise the workings of the KH world for my own purposes.

~*~

~*The Art of Working Backwards*~

Part 4 – Carrying On

~*~

_Flashback_

~*~

_Namine's wide eyes wandered over the castle's immense interior. The arches, hallways, and lifts were all so exotic compared to the one- or two-story structures back on Destiny Islands. The mixture of medieval architecture and high technology was unlike anything she'd ever seen. Yet at the same time, everything looked impossibly familiar. Occasionally, a moment of unsettling déjà vu would strike, leaving Namine to wonder whether she had really anticipated what would be around a corner or her shellshocked mind was playing tricks on her._

"_Do you live here by yourself?" Namine asked shyly, shadowing the tall woman closely for fear of getting lost in the overwhelming, maze-like building._

"_I'm afraid so, child," Maleficent replied with a mock-wistful tone. "It seems that the denizens of most worlds are unwilling to allow a sorceress to live in their midst."_

"_A... a sorceress?" Namine echoed. "You mean you can use magic?" Magic was the stuff of fairytales. Of course, so were castles and monsters, so perhaps it wasn't so strange that it existed here._

"_Oh, I have some talent for the magic arts." Maleficent smiled at her sweetly, and Namine tried not to appear unnerved. This woman, however strange she might seem, was helping her. The least she could do was be polite._

"_Is that how you'll help me find my friends?" Namine asked hopefully._

"_I will certainly try, my dear," Maleficent assured her. "For now, however, you've had a long day, and you need your rest."_

_Maleficent stopped in front of one of the many identical doors along the hallway, and pushed the door open. Several pairs of bright yellow eyes whipped towards them, and Namine shrieked, stumbling backwards. Maleficent laughed, a sound that was meant to be warm but came closer to a chilling cackle._

"_You need not be afraid, my dear," the sorceress assured her. "All of the heartless within this castle are under my command."_

"_Heartless?" Namine edged forward uncertainly, the bag containing her sketchbook clutched in front of her like a shield. "Is that what they're called?"_

"_Indeed it is," Maleficent confirmed, waving a hand to direct the heartless out of the room. "On their own they are mindless insects, devouring the hearts of any who cross their path."_

_Namine shied away as the heartless shadows scurried past, ignoring her presence completely. Maleficent turned away to conceal her wicked grin of amusement._

"_However, they can be controlled by those of sufficient power," the sorceress continued. "This room will be yours for the duration of your stay."_

_Namine stepped through the door hesitantly, glancing around in case more heartless were about. The room was dark and musty from disuse, but was otherwise clean. A bed stood against the wall across the room beside a window with the curtains drawn shut, and a small wooden table beside it played host to what looked like an old-fashioned oil lamp. To her right a dresser with drawers and a mirror stood against the wall. The floor was smooth stone, but a rug collecting dust in the middle of the floor helped make the place welcoming. Colors that had doubtlessly been vivid once were now muted by age, decay, and lack of light._

"_I'm afraid I wasn't expecting guests so I didn't have time to have a room properly prepared for you," a saccharine voice lamented behind her. Namine turned and offered her host a reassuring smile._

"_It's alright," she assured the sorceress. "I like it. I may clean it up a bit, but I could use something like that to take my mind off things."_

"_I'm glad." Maleficent grinned. "I'll leave you to your rest, then. I'll direct one of the heartless to bring you your dinner later. And remember, dear, you need not fear them. The heartless here all answer to me."_

_Namine nodded, trying to appear reassured, and closed the door with a soft thud as the sorceress left. For a long moment, Namine remained still, hands frozen against the door and its handle. Finally, she took the wooden deadbolt and slid it firmly into place. She doubted it would be of any use against a powerful sorceress or even a small heartless, but it still made her feel better._

_She sat down on the bed, scooting backwards until her back was pressed into the corner where the walls met and then arranged the pillows almost defensively around herself. Everything smelled old and unused, like the contents of the trunk that the mayor's wife had kept in her closet back on the islands. Namine's chest clenched at the memory, and she curled up tightly to hold herself together._

_Her thoughts inevitably wandered back to the islands and her friends. They'd been supposed to go on an amazing adventure together. Sure, it was going to be scary at times, but that was alright. Knowing that the three of them would be together, she hadn't been afraid. After all, they were her best friends, and Riku..._

"Hey, don't worry,_" he'd told her when she'd expressed her initial anxiety. "_I promised I'd protect you, remember?_"_

_The memory of his confident smile and a warm hand placed reassuringly over her own was enough to break her. They had their adventure now. But she was alone in a strange world with stranger inhabitants and no idea if she would ever be able to find Riku or Sora again. Legs pulled up tight in her arms, Namine buried her face in her knees and sobbed out her fear into the musty, unfamiliar pillows._

~*~

"When we get to Hollow Bastion, we're going to land in the clearest plaza we can find in the town surrounding the castle," Leon instructed over the radio. Riku, Sora, Kairi, Donald, and Goofy were all crowded in the ship's cockpit to hear final landing instructions. Kairi had taken the pilot's seat for the final descent, claiming that the boys had been hogging the controls the entire trip.

"Remember, we don't know what we'll find down there," Leon continued, his time spent as a mercenary commander showing in his voice. "We're hoping that we won't find any heartless, but I want you to expect them anyway. I won't have anyone getting hurt because they were caught unprepared or off-guard. Understood?"

"We've got it," Riku replied into the wall-mounted speaker. "Sora and I will join you to scout the area, and we'll leave Kairi, Donald, and Goofy to guard the ship."

"Hey! How come I have to stay behind?" Kairi demanded, her indignant tone conveying the expression the boys couldn't see with her eyes kept trained on the route ahead. "Donald and Goofy can handle guarding the ship themselves. Besides, this is my hometown. I want to see it again."

"Kairi, it might not be safe," Sora argued, obviously worried. "You can see everything once we make sure there aren't any heartless around."

"You think I can't take care of myself?" she asked in an almost challenging tone.

"Uh, well..." Sora stumbled over his words.

"I've been traveling with you guys fighting heartless for a while now, Sora," Kairi reminded him. "You might need someone who specializes in magic out there."

"Sora, just let her come with us." Riku didn't bother to hide his amused smirk at what he mentally dubbed a couple's spat. "At the very least, her healing magic could come in handy."

"Agreed," Leon stated over the radio. "Cid and I are taking Aerith with us for the same reason. On a related note, I want people to remain in groups of at least two people at all times. No one goes off alone. Is that clear?"

"It's clear," Riku acknowledged, sparing a glance out of the corner of his eye to catch a glimpse of Kairi's triumphant grin in the reflection of the view screen.

"We're getting close, guys," Kairi told them. "I can make out the individual buildings now."

"Really?" Donald quacked, craning his neck to look. "I can't see!"

"Gawrsh, those houses look pretty run-over," Goofy commented.

"That's 'run-down,'" Donald corrected.

"Since your ship is leading, we'll let you guys pick out a landing spot," Leon continued. "The Highwind will follow you in. Try to find an open area with enough room for both ships. We'll see you on the ground."

"Got it. Gummi Ship, out." Riku flicked off the radio switch, and turned to watch the view screen as the shapes on the ground became increasingly visible.

Most of the buildings were still standing, albeit in various stages of disrepair and neglect. The sprawling city had the eerie feel of a ghost town. The paved streets were empty. Not even birds seemed to inhabit the ruins. Not even an idle breeze disrupted the stillness.

Riku took the scene in gravely with the others. Briefly, he wondered what could be going through Kairi's mind as she looked upon the ruins of her childhood home. It couldn't be an easy sight to see, but when he looked her way he saw her hands keeping steady on the controls. He supposed she was probably more focused on landing the ship than on the scenery for the moment.

"There!" Donald exclaimed, jutting a finger at the screen where a plaza with an empty fountain stood.

"I see it," Kairi assured him, slowing the ship and angling it towards the target location.

Riku put a hand on the back of the pilot's chair to brace himself as Kairi adjusted their flight path for the descent. The gesture was more reflex than necessity. Kairi had the light touch and attention to detail required for smoothly landing a ship. Sora, who seemed to take the controls most often, tended to overcompensate for imbalances in the ship's position, which inevitably led to a bumpy landing. Riku was guilty of the same offense, but would fervently argue that his technique was improving. Kairi, on the other hand, was a natural at bringing the craft down smoothly.

They touched down with hardly a bump, and Kairi powered down the engines.

"That was great, Kairi!" Sora praised enthusiastically. Riku rolled his eyes, but decided to refrain from making a teasing comment. Those two just made it too easy for him. Although, he noted, Kairi's response had been a bit lackluster. She'd given Sora only a brief smile in reply, before sobering. Riku could see why.

On the ground, the eerie feeling of surreal emptiness intensified. Colors seemed oddly faded, and the lifeless scene felt unnervingly reminiscent of a graveyard. The ship, which always began to feel like a prison after a few days of travel, suddenly seemed like a safe cocoon against the world outside.

"Opening the hatch," Kairi announced. She stood and faced her friends with a forced smile. "You guys ready?"

Sora noticed the change in attitude and grew concerned. "Kairi, are you sure-? Hey! Riku, ow!"

"Move," Riku deadpanned, grabbing Sora by a spiky tuft of hair and dragging him towards the ship's hatch. He smirked, clearly able to imagine Sora's disgruntled pout as Donald and Goofy snickered at his predicament. Kairi sighed at their antics before turning to their two anthropomorphic friends.

"Remember you guys, it's your job to make sure that nothing happens to the ship while we're gone. I know it's no fun getting left behind, but someone has to keep an eye on things here."

"No need to worry, Princess Kairi!" Goofy assured her with unflagging cheer.

"You can count on us!" Donald added, throwing in a salute for good measure.

"Thanks, you two." Kairi grinned. "And I've told you, you really don't have to call me 'Princess.'"

"You got it, Princ- Oops! I mean, Kairi!" Goofy corrected sheepishly.

"Hurry it up!" Riku called back. "The Highwind's about to land."

"Coming!" Kairi replied, hurrying to the hatch. As she descended the ramp to the ground, she had to hold a hand up in front of her to keep the dust kicked up by the Highwind's engines out of her eyes. She could see that Riku and Sora were having the same issue; Sora having turned his head entirely away from the blowing debris, and Riku holding one arm up while squinting stubbornly into the wind.

The larger ship landed with textbook perfection and powered down its engines, allowing the dust to settle. Kairi lowered her hand and blinked, noticing for the first time that Sora and Riku had taken Leon's call for preparation to heart. Sora had his Keyblade ready in hand while Riku carried his sword, Souleater, at his side.

Kairi had been there when Riku received his blade. When the boys first visited Merlin, the problem of Riku's lack of a weapon had come up. Merlin had agreed to teach Riku to summon a blade made from the strength of his own heart. That the blade bore such a grisly name as Souleater had unsettled her at first, but over time she'd begun to suspect that the appellation was more of an unglossed reflection of the weapon's practical purpose than anything malignant. It was just like Riku to be so straightforward. If the blade would be used to kill monsters, why bother disguising its purpose with a pretty name?

Kairi's attention was quickly recaptured as the hatch in the Highwind's belly opened, and Leon, Cid, and Aerith stepped out.

"Well, now," Cid drawled, rolling a cigarette between his teeth, "looks like you three got a face full of sand right there."

Indeed, Sora, Riku, and Kairi were all in the midst of trying to inconspicuously blink or wipe the dust from their eyes. Leon sighed.

"I forgot I was working with amateurs," he grumbled. "Next time, stay in your ship until the other ships in your group have landed. Otherwise you could get in the way of the ships coming in after you or get hurt by flying debris."

"I think we'll remember that next time," Kairi assured him, rubbing her eyes. A face full of dust was hard to forget whether one wanted to or not. Sora wanted to complain about being called an "amateur" but realized it would be useless to protest while he was blinking grit out of his eyes. Riku just grimaced quietly, filing the directions away for next time.

"Good. Now," Leon continued, moving on quickly, "like I said before, our first priority is to find shelter. We can stay in the ships if we have to, but if we're going to be making a permanent settlement here, we're going to need permanent structures for people to live in. Also, keep an eye out for hazards, and I don't just mean heartless. This place hasn't been maintained for a long time, and I'm willing to bet that most of these buildings are no longer structurally sound."

"We'll be careful," Sora promised, eager to head out and explore.

"If you get into any trouble or get lost, cast one Fire spell straight up. Understood?" Leon asked sternly.

"We've got it," Riku assured him quickly. He was just as eager to get going as Sora, even if he managed to hide it better.

"Alright. Kairi's the team leader. Meet back here in an hour." With that, Leon turned and led his group away, leaving three flummoxed teens in his wake.

"Kairi?" Sora asked, confused. "I mean, not that you'd make a bad leader, but-"

"I know, Sora." She smiled, letting him know that she understood and wasn't offended. "I'm not sure why Leon picked me either. I'm used to one of you two leading when we visit other worlds."

"Maybe he chose you because this is your home world," Riku suggested, shrugging off his surprise. He trusted Leon's judgment above most others. From what he'd seen, the older man was brave, self-possessed, and reliable. He was the sort of person that people would turn to in a crisis, and the sort of person that Riku wanted to become. So if Leon believed Kairi would be the best leader for their scouting team, Riku would trust his decision.

"In any case," the elder boy continued, "we'd better get going. Lead on, Kairi."

~*~

One hour was a long time to sit around in a ship waiting for one's friends to return. To pass the time, Donald and Goofy paced around and eventually wound up tuning the view screen to the radio frequency so they could get into a remote "funny faces" contest with Yuffie who'd been left behind in the other ship. Eventually, the restless bouncing ninja convinced them that it would be easier to guard the ships from outside where they could see their surroundings clearly without relying on the ships' sensors.

And so, Goofy and Donald found themselves marching around the two ships while Yuffie jumped around on top of them, her spirits entirely unaffected by the dreary atmosphere. She was obviously reveling in the chance to climb and hop around on top of the blocky ships, something Cid would have throttled her for had he been there to witness it. The eerie stillness kept Donald on edge, however, which only added to his surprise when Goofy stopped suddenly, causing the duck to walk beak-first into him.

"Hey!" he squawked indignantly. "Watch where you're going, you big palooka!"

"But, Donald," Goofy protested, "I thought I saw somethin'."

"What?! Where?!" Donald looked around rapidly, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Up on the ships, Yuffie continued her cheerful stunts unabated.

"Up there!" Goof pointed skyward where an oddly-shaped black spot was visible against the grey sky. Donald frowned and squinted upwards.

"Aww… That's just a bird," Donald dismissed.

"But what's that it's carryin'?" Goofy asked. "Maybe it's important."

"Important?" Donald fumed. "I'll tell you what's important! Come on." Hopping up to grab Goofy by the collar, Donald dragged him forward to continue their patrol.

"Gawrsh! If you say so," Goofy conceded, giving in to his shorter companion's temper, as usual. "You know, it'd be easier for me to walk if you'd let go."

Donald ignored the implied request and continued to pull Goofy along, grumbling all the way about stupid birds and big, dumb palookas that paid far too much attention to them.

~*~

In the highest tower of Hollow Bastion, the raven dropped its cargo, a pitch black cape with jagged edges. The bird cawed its satisfaction, preening its already-neat feathers. Although he took great pride in his sleek appearance, his mistress did not keep him around for looks. As the familiar of a powerful, wicked fairy, he had been granted some limited intelligence and taught that if anything should happen to his mistress, it would be his duty to revive her. All his life, he had lived within her thrall so that he would serve his mistress loyally even after her destruction. Now, it was time for him to fulfill his duty.

It was time to call Maleficent back to the realm of the living.

~*~

AN: Haha! I feel like the plot is finally taking off. X3 Exciting, no? The next chapter is being outlined already, but I'll be more motivated to finish if I know people are awaiting it.


	6. Part 5: Interruptions

AN: This story is a beast. I swear it's taken on a life of its own. Is it just me or are these chapters getting longer?

~*~

~*The Art of Working Backwards*~

Part 5 – Interruptions

The exploration was not turning out as exciting as Riku had hoped. After long days spent cooped up in a tiny Gummi Ship, he'd been hoping for some action, but all they'd found were crumbling buildings. Sora had long since dismissed his keyblade, and Riku didn't bother to chide him for it, though he kept Souleater cautiously ready. Their three-person group was on its third hour-long expedition out into the ruins. Leon had decided it was best to break scouting up into short trips with debriefing sessions in between to relay their findings. It was safer that way since people were less likely to go too far and get lost, and if anyone fell into trouble the others would know when they failed to return on time.

So far, there was nothing of any real interest. The streets were mostly intact, but cracked in areas where tough-rooted weeds had taken hold and spread. Building made of brick or mortar were generally still standing, but those made from wood had almost all collapsed. The city was an eerie, quiet maze. In Riku's opinion, the worst part was the emptiness. There was little evidence of the disaster that had taken place all those years ago, leaving Riku with the unsettling impression that everyone had simply disappeared.

There were some things he really didn't want to notice: the deflated rubber of a child's ball in the middle of the street, a fully set table visible through a broken window, a pair of dirty shoes sitting out by a collapsed porch. Kairi had said that the heartless had come quickly. Until then, Riku never really understood how quickly.

Kairi wasn't looking well. Every time she saw some obvious sign of a life suddenly and horribly interrupted she looked like she might be ill. At their last debriefing, even Riku had been wondering whether it wouldn't be better for Kairi to take some time to rest and digest what she'd seen, but as always, she stubbornly refused.

"_I want to help_," she'd insisted. "_Besides, I just feel… I feel like I really need to see this_."

Although Kairi continued exploring with them, Riku couldn't help but wonder what thoughts and memories the scene must be stirring. She'd been so little when this happened, but not so little that she wouldn't be able to remember. Not long after they'd set out on this most recent trip, Riku had seen Sora take her hand in reassurance. In an unusual show of tact, Riku pretended not to notice.

"There's nothing out here," he said, suppressing the urge to flinch at the way his voice disturbed the still air. It seemed so out of place. "We should start heading back."

"I think you're right," Kairi agreed, sounding almost normal. "It's almost been half an hour since we left, and Leon will worry if we're back late."

Kairi turned to lead the way, fulfilling her unaccustomed position as team leader, but it was only a few steps before she stopped abruptly, staring at a small, dirty object half-covered by an overgrown hedge.

"Kairi?" Sora asked concernedly, squeezing her hand. The girl shook her head, snapping out of her trance.

"It's nothing, Sora," she assured him with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Come on."

"Okay," Sora conceded hesitantly as Kairi picked their path down the crumbling road.

Riku lagged intentionally behind, stopping to see what had shaken their friend so deeply. Using the tip of Souleater to push aside the obscuring branches of the hedge, Riku felt his own chest constrict at the sight. Dirty and decayed to the point where Riku was amazed Kairi had even been able to identify the thing from a distance was a little cloth doll with blonde hair.

~*~

"Tonight, we camp out!" Yuffie declared, shattering the serious mood pervading the assembled group.

"It would be safer if we stayed in the ships," Leon countered, frowning.

"Safer from what? Dust bunnies?" Yuffie snorted derisively. "We've been crammed into those sardine cans for days!"

"Hey! What did you just call a sardine can?" Cid fumed.

"We could all use some fresh air," the teen ninja continued, ignoring the outburst. "You guys have been wandering around this ghost town for hours, and you haven't run into so much as an alley cat."

"That's what worries me," Leon argued. "If this place were really abandoned by the heartless, wouldn't we see some signs of life?"

Yuffie rolled her eyes. "Leon, you'd be nervous if this place were full of unicorns prancing through meadows and crapping rainbows!"

"That would be pretty disturbing," Riku mused from the sidelines. Leon nodded his agreement.

"The point is," Yuffie continued, undaunted, "you worry too much! We all need to unwind a bit: sit around a campfire, sing silly songs, tell ghost stories… All that good stuff!"

"That does sound pretty fun," Sora agreed, catching some of Yuffie's excitement.

"Of course it does!" Yuffie grinned broadly. "And besides…" Yuffie reach for something behind her back. "I brought MARSHMALLOWS!" She whipped the bag of puffy white goodness out and brandished it in front of her.

Leon sighed. "Look, Yuffie-"

"Marshmallows!"

"I know, but-"

"Marshmallows!"

"Yuffie!"

"…Marshmallows?"

Leon sighed, his resistance crumbling in the face of logic and Yuffie's pleading expression.

"Fine," he conceded. "We can camp out."

Yuffie squealed in excitement, latching onto the man in a hug that was oddly reminiscent of a squid wrapping its tentacles around its prey.

"But..!" Leon choked, prying Yuffie's arms away from his wind pipe. "But we're going to have people keeping watch in shifts throughout the night. I don't want to take any chances."

"You got it, Leon!" Yuffie released him, hopping back and snapping a mock salute. "Come on you two!" She snagged Sora and Riku by their wrists. "We're going to get firewood!"

"Hey! Why us?" Sora protested as he was dragged.

"Yeah," Riku agreed, "the fire was your idea."

"But I'm a girl!" Yuffie countered cheerfully. "And girls shouldn't have to do heavy labor when there are guys around. Now come on!"

By the time Hollow Bastion darkened into night (oddly there was no sunset), the group had a large fire going, fed by the omnipresent debris from collapsed buildings. Leon had tried to convince Yuffie to keep the fire small so it wouldn't use as much wood, but Yuffie just rolled her eyes and waved towards a collapsed shop nearby.

"I don't think we have to worry much about that, Squall."

"It's Leon," he grumbled and stalked off to take the first watch.

Cid started a smaller fire off to the side and let it burn down to coals before setting an iron tea kettle on top of them to boil water. Frankly, he favored ceramics, but there was no way he was bringing out his good tea cups while Yuffie was around. When the tea was ready, Aerith left to take a cup out to Leon. Cid, Kairi, and Riku sat around the little fire, drinking tea and watching Yuffie, Sora, Donald and Goofy making shadow puppets against the side of the Gummi Ship.

"Cid?" Kairi began tentatively. "Do you remember my sister, Namine?"

The grizzled old pilot gave her a measured look before tossing back the rest of his tea like a shot of whiskey.

"Course I remember her. Saw the pair of you rugrats runnin' around the castle courtyard a few times." He scratched the stubble sprouting on his chin. "What are you talkin' 'bout a thing like that for all out of the blue?"

Kairi made eye contact with Riku, silently asking him to help explain the recent development. In the background, they could hear Yuffie imitating Donald's voice as she made a duck-shaped shadow with her hands, much to the magician's irritation.

"There was this girl that washed up on our islands," Riku began. "She was the same age as Kairi would have been, and her name was Namine, too."

Cid's eyes lit up with sudden interest. "Is that so? Did that Namine ever say anything about castles or heartless?"

"I don't think so." Riku frowned, struggling to remember. "I think… she'd lost her memory. Her name was the only thing she knew. We hung out with her a lot, I think, but I can't remember any of it."

"Riku only started remembering her recently," Kairi explained, seeing Cid's incredulous expression. "Someone left a picture of her by his bed."

Riku took his cue and pulled out the picture, unfolding it for Cid to see. Cid took the cigarette out of his mouth and leaned forward for a better look.

"Well don't that beat all," he mused. "It does look like her." He leaned back, and Riku carefully refolded the image. Cid took a deep drag off of his cigarette.

"Weird as hell, though. Why'd she start poppin' up in people's memories now?"

"Maybe it's because we're near the place where she died," Yuffie suggested, breaking in on the conversation on which she'd apparently been eavesdropping. "Maybe… she's a _ghost_! Wow! What if she's still haunting this place?"

"That would be sad, though," Kairi said solemnly. "It would mean she was never able to rest after the heartless..."

"She didn't die!" Riku stated firmly, then paused, startled by his own conviction. "I mean, if your Namine is the same as the one that washed up on our islands, then she must have survived what happened here at Hollow Bastion."

"But what happened when the heartless invaded yer place?" Cid asked. "Far as we know, you and that runt with the keyblade are the only two that made it out."

"I… don't remember," Riku admitted. "I feel like I should, but whenever I try to there are all these gaps I never noticed before. It's so weird."

"Somethin' fishy is goin' on," Cid grumbled, rubbing out his spent cigarette butt on the ground. "It's enough to make me wish we'd brought that crazy old wizard along with us. Merlin's a right kook, but he always seems to know 'bout weird stuff like this. In the meantime, you might talk to Leon and Aerith about it; see if either of them know anything useful."

~*~

In a deeply shadowed room of Hollow Bastion's great castle, a large oval mirror hanging from the wall played silent images of the campout.

"Well, well," the watcher mused in a cruel, feminine voice, "it appears the vermin want to nest. We can't have that, now can we, my pet?"

The sorceress stroked her raven's glossy feathers as the bird cawed emphatically.

"You're right," she agreed. "Vermin ought to be exterminated. But what to do? It will take some time to regain my full strength."

The bird croaked and cawed again, tugging lightly at her black cloak with his beak. The woman cackled wickedly.

"I was thinking the exact same thing. After all, this world seems rather empty without my heartless, and a queen needs her subjects."

Raising her staff before her, the sorceress opened a swirling portal before her and stepped through into the realm of darkness.

~*~

Back beneath her tree in Starless Night, Namine sat quietly, eyes closed as she reached out carefully along the frail line that connected her to her heart. Although she could not use it to locate her own heart, it bound her to the hearts of others, and it was only by following this thin thread that she could enter the hearts of her friends and rebuild their memories. Every time she focused on it, the thread seemed to become thinner, adding to her sense of urgency even as she worked.

She entered Riku's heart first. When thinking of triggers or ties that might lead to other memories, her mind had immediately gone to her star charm that Riku now carried. Carefully, she sifted through his memories for flashes of that familiar item that she could easily bind together, choosing the most important from among them to create a little packet of memory. She tried not to look too closely at any one memory – it always felt like an intrusion when she did – just close enough to give her a general idea of what it entailed.

Namine wasn't sure how many memories she should link together at once. Would it harm Riku's mind if she put too many together? Yet it was hard to force herself to be overly cautious when facing her imminent end.

The feeling of a portal being opened nearby and almost tangible darkness jerked her from her trance. Ahead of her, the cliff and sea remained undisturbed, but when she turned to peak around the tree…

Maleficent!

Namine clasped her hands over her mouth to stifle an instinctive cry of alarm. The witch in her horned black robe looked around, surveying the empty wastes with obvious displeasure.

"Where are they?" she snarled. As her gaze swept in her direction, Namine snapped back behind the tree to avoid detection.

"Hmph," Maleficent sniffed. "I suppose I'll simply have to bring them in from somewhere else."

Namine peeked back around the tree trunk to watch as Maleficent opened another portal. Rather than stepping through, Maleficent spread her arms in front of it in a gesture that Namine recognized as part of a spell.

"Heartless!" she called, her voice echoing with the force of an enchantment. "Come to me!"

Heeding the sorceress's command, shadows streamed out of the portal in droves, creating a small ocean of inky blackness and flashing yellow eyes. Namine forced herself not to flinch as several of the heartless milled around her ankles.

'How could Maleficent be alive?' Namine wondered in panic. She'd watched her die! Yet now she was back and apparently wasting no time rebuilding her army. What could she be planning? Namine's gut twisted as a chilling thought struck her. Vengeance. Maleficent would want revenge on those who'd dared challenge her. After all the time she'd spent alongside the witch, she was certain. Fear for her friends rose, and as Maleficent opened another portal, Namine found herself leaping out from her hiding spot without stopping to think.

"Stop!" Namine shouted. More startling than the sound of her own raised voice was the fact that Maleficent obeyed. The witch turned slowly, and as her eyes fell on the small girl, her expression slid into an amused grin.

"Well, well. So you're still alive." Maleficent gave Namine a searching look that made the girl shudder and question the wisdom of her interference.

"I'm surprised," the witch confessed. "Who would have thought that a Princess of Heart could survive so long without hers?"

"What-" Namine began, her voice catching anxiously. She tried again. "What are you going to do?"

"What's wrong, my dear?" Maleficent grinned cruelly. "Worried about your little friends?"

"I'm not your 'dear.'" Namine forced herself to hold the sorceress's gaze, clenching her trembling hands into fists at her sides. "And you leave them alone!"

"Oh?" Maleficent laughed, entertained by her former puppet's small show of defiance. "And what exactly do you intend to do about it? Your powers cannot touch my heart, and you have no weapon. You are dying, Princess, wasting away in darkness. You have no power over me."

Namine stood frozen at the words, her rebellious anger melting in the face of such blatant truth. Maleficent watched her for a moment, pleased by the broken silence that descended over the girl, then turned back to her portal. Namine saw her move, and her distant heart stirred her.

"Stop," Namine pleaded, her voice almost a whisper. Maleficent didn't even hear; she began to step through. A sudden rush of desperation ripped down the frail thread from Namine's heart.

"STOP!"

Suddenly, a heartless-black chain shot out from the ground between Namine and the witch, wrapping itself around Maleficent's wrist. The two of them stared at the chain with mutual astonishment before Maleficent broke the silence.

"Well," she mused, sending some of her green fire down the chain to burn away the links, "I suppose every heartless has its special powers."

Namine watched the dark chain dissolve in stunned silence. She supposed it made sense that if she was gaining a heartless's needs and hungers that she would also gain their powers. The notion was not a comforting one.

Maleficent raised a hand, and before Namine realized what was happening, a circle of green fire sprang up around her. Lines of flame shot up over her head to create a domed cage around the startled girl. Namine yelped in alarm, ducking on instinct.

"A heartless Princess may be a valuable commodity, but I certainly can't have you interfering." Maleficent grinned wickedly. "Not that you'd be much of an interference, of course. Now, you wait there until I return. Then we can decide your fate."

"Wait!" Namine cried, but Maleficent had already stepped through her portal

~*~

AN: Ah! *falls over* Rough chapter. I can't believe it's finished. Of course, now the next one is prodding at the back of my brain… At any rate, all reviews are appreciated!


	7. Part 6: Unexpected

AN: Yes, the chapters are definitely getting longer. Don't blame me; I just write the stuff. XP

~*~

~*The Art of Working Backwards*~

Part 6 – Unexpected

"Hey, Leon," Riku greeted, walking up behind the stoic man. Leon merely grunted in response, not moving from his seat on the rubble of a low stone wall that had once bordered the plaza.

"What brings you out here?" Leon asked without turning to face him.

"Second watch." Riku shrugged, though he knew Leon couldn't see. He climbed up onto the three-foot pile of stone and found a seat by his older friend. "I don't feel much like sleeping."

Leon nodded, requiring no further explanation. "Do you see the fence around that house out there?" he asked.

Caught off guard by the question, but assuming there was a reason for it, Riku looked off into the darkness, straining his eyes in an attempt to see into the gloom.

"I can't see anything," he admitted.

"I'm staying here until you can," Leon stated. "Your eyes are still adjusted to the light from the fire. It'll be a few minutes before you get your night vision."

Riku nodded in acknowledgement, mentally tucking away that bit of information, and for a while the two of them sat together in easy silence. A thought occurred to Riku, and after a moment's hesitation, he spoke.

"Remember when we first got back to Traverse Town?" he asked. "And you and Aerith asked if we'd found our friend?"

"I remember," Leon said, glancing over at Riku for the first time.

"Do you remember who it was? We must have told you something about her."

Leon looked off into the darkness for a moment before shaking his head. "Not a clue. Until you said that, I didn't even know it was a 'her.' You remembered?"

"I don't know," Riku confessed. "Maybe. There was this girl who washed up on our islands, but until a few days ago, Sora and I didn't remember anything about her. And that's not even the weird part."

"Oh?" Leon raised an eyebrow.

"Her name was Namine," Riku said, anticipating, yet still surprised by, the shock in Leon's normally dispassionate expression. "I talked to Kairi already, and I know that was her sister's name. I also know they looked exactly alike." Riku paused for a moment to let the pieces come together. "If we were looking for her, we would have definitely described her to you, and you would have reacted just the same, right? It's like she was just… wiped from everyone's minds."

Leon frowned and rubbed the bridge of his nose in a habitual gesture that signaled an oncoming headache. "But if those two Namine's are the same, and she was supposedly wiped from everyone's memories, then why would we still remember her living in Hollow Bastion?"

Riku frowned. That put a serious hole in his theory.

"Still," Leon continued, "that is strange. Who else have you talked to about this?"

"Mostly Sora and Kairi," Riku said. "We brought it up to Cid not too long ago and the others overheard. Aerith was away with you when we talked, but Kairi's filling her in on the details."

Leon nodded, taking it all in. Then he noticed the frown forming on Riku's face. "What is it?"

"I think I see the house you mentioned," Riku explained, staring out at the eerie nightscape, "but there's no fence around it."

"Good," Leon stated with a small smirk, getting off the wall and heading back towards the campfire, intent on talking with the others. "There isn't one."

~*~

Maleficent stepped back into her castle with only a few heartless trailing her, but that was to be expected. Most of them had gone straight for the light they sensed elsewhere in that world, easily abandoning the one who had led them there. Maleficent walked back over to her mirror and waved her hand before it, causing its reflective surface to swirl and blur into a bird's-eye view of the keyblade brat's camp. Maleficent grinned. Now there was nothing to do but sit back and watch the show.

~*~

Namine stared out from between the green bars of fire as Maleficent's heartless streamed through the portal. Fear and helplessness were powerful, yet oddly distant emotions, rendered less effective by her heartlessness. The wall between Namine and her feelings left her oddly clear-headed in the face of a situation that would have otherwise sent her into panic. She watched some of the heartless sink flat against the ground to wriggle under and ahead of their companions.

"If I could do that, I might be able to get out of here," she mused. But her lament quickly turned to inspiration. Recalling the chain she'd summoned against Maleficent, she tried to remember what she'd done to call it forth. It had been so reflexive then, as simple as moving her hand. Taking a deep breath, Namine tried to focus. Just like using a muscle, right?

A thin chain shot out from the ground near her feet and latched onto one of the bars of fire. However, before Namine could take any pride in her success, the fire shot down its length, burning it away into mere wisps of darkness. Namine's shoulders slumped in disappointment, but then something caught her attention. In the place where her chain had latched on, the fire was slowly pulling back together. So the cage had been damaged, then?

Focusing on the bar right in front of her, Namine tried to produce two chains from the ground. They didn't appear simultaneously, as she'd intended, but one right after the other, the first latching onto the bar at the top and the other near its base. As before, the chains burned away, leaving little gaps in the flame in their wake, but this time, the large middle section of the bar was left unconnected to the rest of the cage. Unsupported, it quickly withered away to nothing.

Namine seized the opportunity, edging sideways through the gap as the bars above and below her began to grow back together. Moving quickly, with less caution than was normal for her, she stepped free of the cage well before the bars fused back into one.

"Every heartless has its special powers," Namine whispered, echoing Maleficent's words from before. If she'd still had her heart, it would have ached. As it was, Namine had more pressing concerns.

Closing her eyes, Namine slipped again into the world of hearts and memories. Not bothering with caution or care, she swiftly followed her heart's thread to Riku's and then into his heart. She took the links of his most recent memories and sifted rapidly through them: travelling in the Gummi ship, going somewhere with others, a dead place, lifeless streets…

Hollow Bastion.

Namine's eyes snapped open. She knew where her friends were. There was no time to question or ask why they'd chosen to return to that place. She had to get to them before Maleficent did. Stepping close to Maleficent's portal, she touched it, letting its destination flash through her mind. She frowned. This was not an ordinary portal. A one-way passage into Hollow Bastion, its destination was non-specific, allowing whoever passed through it to pop up wherever they liked in that world. It was powerful magic, something Namine would never have been able to produce.

She tried to will it shut, but the portal was locked firmly in place by a force beyond the girl's power to control. But there was no time for further attempts. A non-specific portal meant that Maleficent and her heartless could have set upon her friends in an instant. Without further hesitation, she plunged through the portal, her destination clear in mind.

~*~

Riku sat casually on the wall, one knee drawn up with an arm resting across it while his heel tapped a steady rhythm against the crumbling stone. He could hear the distant murmur of voices from the camp and the occasional crackle of the fire, but little else. There was no wind to stir the lifeless wreckage or stir the debris. Around others, it was easy for him to keep the eeriness of the ghostly landscape at bay, but on his own he found himself twitching at imagined noises and straining his ears for some warning whisper that never came.

Scolding himself, he tried not to jump at an unexpected pop of the fire and to push childhood ghost stories from his mind. He reminded himself that there was nothing out there. Besides, his friends were well within shouting distance if anything came up, and that knowledge helped. Sort of.

The first time he saw a flash of golden eyes in the darkness, he thought it was his mind playing tricks on him and scolded himself for his paranoia. Then those eyes got bigger, closer, and more numerous, and a heavy feeling of cold realization pooled in his gut. Immediately, he jumped to his feet atop the wall and summoned Souleater to his hand.

"We've got company!" he shouted over his shoulder. He could only hope he'd been heard as the first shadow lunged at him, and he was forced to turn his attention to the advancing swarm before him.

~*~

The group was gathered around the fire when Riku's warning shout came. They were all gathered together, even the more distractible youngsters drawn in by talk of the girl no one could remember. All heads snapped towards Riku just in time to see the first shadows spilling over the rubble.

"Heartless!" Leon growled, watching as the creatures that got by Riku's blade headed right for their assembled group. "Everyone to the ships!"

"Wait! What about, Riku?" Sora demanded. "He's going to be stuck out there."

Leon hesitated only a moment. "Aerith, Cid – get everyone onto the ships. Sora and I will go help Riku."

"Alright!" Sora cheered, summoning his keyblade as the two rushed off into the fray.

"Be careful, you guys!" Kairi called after them as Aerith herded her towards the Highwind.

Leon, with his longer stride and greater experience, took the lead, cutting a large swath through the shadows with his gunblade. Sora followed quickly after, swatting away any heartless that may have escaped. So far they were mostly Shadows, easy prey for skilled fighters, but more powerful, dangerous heartless were beginning to appear among the lesser monsters.

Riku was quite skilled with a blade – Sora still had yet to defeat him, in fact – but even he couldn't fed off attacks coming from more directions than he had hands. Out of his peripheral vision, he saw Sora and Leon heading towards him, but as he desperately knocked back a Neoshadow, he knew their help wouldn't come soon enough.

The ruins of the old houses and shops stood fairly close to the wall where he was making his stand. Gaze darting about, he saw one flat-roofed building off to his right still intact. A lesser shadow used his moment of distraction to rake its claws across his leg, eliciting a startled cry of pain. The wound wasn't deep, however, and the heartless soon dissolved into wisps of darkness beneath its victim's sword.

Riku darted to his right, scampering across the wall of rubble and mentally praying that none of his footholds were loose. He swatted aside a few heartless in his way, not caring if he killed them or not. The low wall was rapidly being overrun. As he neared his destination, he sped up. Then, pushing off to the side with as much force as he could muster, Riku launched himself towards the house's roof.

The impact knocked the breath from his lungs, probably bruising a few ribs as well, as he landed chest first on the concrete barrier bordering the flat roof. Riku pushed himself up and rolled over it with a groan, landing on his back on the hard surface. Forcing himself to stand before he'd fully caught his breath, Riku looked out across the sea of shadows to where Sora and Leon were still fighting their way towards him, although the heartless continued to increase in number and had begun to push them back.

With the situation looking grim, Riku glanced around for some possible avenue of escape. Off in the distance, he noticed that the heartless thinned out and vanished, their yellow eyes no longer interrupting the shadows. It took only one more look at Sora and Leon's increasingly dangerous position for him to make his decision.

"Hey!" Riku shouted to get their attention. The two looked up from where they stood back-to-back in the fray.

"There aren't as many heartless out that way," Riku continued, making sure they saw where he was pointing between their defensive strikes. "I'm going to use the rooftops to get out of this. You guys can come after me in the ships."

Both Sora and Leon looked like they wanted to protest, but after desperately fending off several more attacks, the hopelessness of their rescue attempt was becoming obvious.

"Be careful!" Leon shouted back, knocking away a Neoshadow that got dangerously close. "Try to send up a signal so we can find you faster."

"And don't let them get your heart!" Sora added. His distress at leaving his best friend behind showed as Leon was forced to drag him the first few steps back towards the ships by his collar. Riku could only wave in reply, doubting his voice would come out as self-assured as it would have to be to convince his best friend since diapers that he'd really be alright.

A quiet scratching noise behind him alerted Riku to the fact that his perch was no longer completely secure. Whipping around just in time to meet a pair of shadows, he dispatched them with a few quick slashes only to see another crawl up onto the roof behind them. Riku tore through it with a growl of exasperation.

"Do these things really have to be able to climb like spiders?" he complained, hurrying over to the ledge to look for the next closest roof. He swore, borrowing a few words he'd learned from Cid, when he saw that the nearest completely intact roof was well beyond his reach. Across the alleyway, however, there was a gently slanted wooden roof that had only fallen in on one side.

Riku hesitated only as long as it took for a Neoshadow to leap up on the roof behind him. Taking his cue and one hell of a chance, he stepped up onto the concrete rim and jumped. He landed solidly on the sloped rooftop, thanking every deity he could think of when it held his weight. Not bothering to stop and look back, Riku identified the next solid-looking roof and went for it.

Unfortunately, this one was **only** solid-looking. In a confusing jumble of splinters and debris, Riku fell through the roof and landed squarely on top of someone's kitchen table. Two of the legs promptly gave out, causing the table to dump its assailant on the floor in a rather undignified heap of aching limbs.

Riku groaned, pushing himself up into a sitting position. He was going to need a Cura after this for sure. Souleater had vanished when he lost concentration on it, but that was probably for the best. If it hadn't, he could have fallen right on top of it. With one arm wrapped around his ribs – a few of which he was certain were cracked by now – he stumbled towards the door and quickly threw it open.

He shut it just as quickly.

"Not good," he muttered to himself, stumbling back just in time to avoid being hit by the same door as it was broken inward off its hinges by a huge, rounded heartless, aptly called a Large Body.

"_Really_ not good," he corrected as he looked around, trying to find a way to get past the thing. The only way to defeat a Large Body was to hit it from behind. How was he supposed to do that when it practically filled up the room? He summoned Souleater anyway, edging back as the creature advanced and wondering whether he'd be better off diving through a broken window and incurring a potentially lethal amount of blood loss.

As it turned out, he didn't have to put that desperate notion to the test. Dark chains shot out from somewhere behind the large heartless, wrapping around its limbs and neck, and then dragging its thrashing form back out into the crumbling street. Stunned and uncertain whether he should be grateful or terrified, Riku stepped cautiously towards the shattered doorway. He couldn't stay in the run-down house forever, but he wasn't sure he really wanted to deal with something that could take down a Large Body so quickly. Actually, the house was starting to look rather cozy…

Nothing could have prepared him for the sight of the petite blonde who'd haunted his memories stepping into the circle of the shattered entryway. With pale blonde hair framing delicate features and wearing a pristine white sundress, she looked impossibly out of place amidst the darkness and destruction of the embattled ghost town.

"Are you alright?" she asked, rushing up to him. Riku found himself unable to respond as his mind tried to come to terms with the surrealism of the moment.

"Riku!" she called, worried by his lack of response.

"You know me," he replied dazedly. 'And I know you,' his mind added. He would later reflect on this moment and kick himself at how stupid he sounded, but really, he couldn't be expected to be too coherent after being attacked and falling through a roof.

"Yes," his savior acknowledged, "and we have to get out of here! They're still coming."

Riku looked past her towards the doorway, and saw a few small Shadows beginning to crawl in. The sight of the approaching heartless hit him like a bucket of cold water. His confusion could wait.

"Right," he nodded, stepping past her to intercept the heartless before they could get too close. Two quick slashes dispersed them and he held his free hand out to her. "Come on."

The girl reached out for Riku's hand, but hesitated to take it. He rolled his eyes and grabbed her hand, ignoring a squeak of surprise as he pulled her out the door. Stepping out into the open street, Riku glanced from side to side, trying to remember which way the mass of heartless ended.

"Go that way," the girl instructed as if reading his mind, pointing off to the right with her free hand. "There aren't as many over there."

Riku nodded and took off, still pulling her along behind him. He tried to ignore the ache in his ribs and the chill in the girl's skin as he focused on batting away the lesser heartless and dodging around the bigger ones. After several more blocks, the heartless in their path grew fewer and weaker, until Riku felt safe enough to slump against the last standing wall of what was once a stone house.

Finally releasing the girl's hand, he slid his back down the wall until he sat heavily at its base. He was breathing hard and trying not to grimace from the pain of it, but when he looked up at his companion, she didn't even seem winded. She looked anxious, watching him with her hands clasped unconsciously in front of her, but she certainly didn't look like someone who'd just been running for her life.

"Namine."

Her head jerked up at the word, her expression both startled and hopeful at once.

"That's your name, isn't it?" Riku asked rhetorically, still breathing hard between phrases. "I knew you once... Back on the islands. Why… why don't I remember? Why'd I start remembering now?"

Namine smiled sadly and sat down slowly next to him, drawing her knees up to her chest.

"It's a long story, and it's kind of hard to explain," she began, opting to look at her baby blue sandals rather than his questioning gaze. "But basically, it's my fault."

"Your fault?" Riku questioned.

"When the heartless came to the islands, we got separated. You and Sora made it somewhere safe; I didn't."

Riku sat quietly, listening carefully to the unfolding story that held the answers to the questions that had been plaguing his mind for the last few days.

"I made some mistakes," she confessed, fingers twining together anxiously. "Big ones. But by the time I realized that, there wasn't anything I could do to set it right, except…" She trailed off.

How could she tell him what she, in her desperation, had done? How could she tell the boy she so loved and admired what she was becoming? How could she tell him that if things went poorly, he might have to do to her what she'd just watched him do to those Shadows?

"Except?" Riku prompted, stirring her from her silence.

"I erased everyone's memories of me, because I was trying to protect them," Namine continued, omitting the words her distant heart still wouldn't let her say. "But… things changed, and there was a chance that you might be able to help me." She gave him a small smile. "Of course, right now it looks like you need my help more than I need yours."

Somehow, Riku couldn't help but return her grin. When she blushed and looked back down at her feet, he felt his heart speed up in a way that was oddly familiar. Actually, if she'd really erased his memories of her, then it probably was familiar, just forgotten. As he began contemplating different ways to ask what help she needed without losing that smile – and perhaps to deepen that blush as well – he heard the approaching roar of a ship's engine and looked up to see the Gummi Ship approaching.

"Come on, Namine," he said, using the wall to help himself stand. "We should… go?"

She was gone.

"Namine?" He looked around at the empty streets and broken-down buildings. Nowhere in the dismal landscape was there any sign that the girl had ever existed. The Gummi Ship was drawing closer, his friends having obviously spotted his location, but all he could do was wonder where she'd gone, if she'd ever even been there at all.

~*~

AN: Wow… This is the first time I've ever written this much so quickly. I literally drafted the whole thing in one sitting. The astute reader may notice that I've begun to capitalize the names of different types of heartless when I didn't before. This is mostly to avoid confusion that I realized may occur. For example: "He attacked the Shadow." vs "He attacked the shadow." Basically, I'm trying to avoid any "I cast Magic Missile at the darkness!"-type confusion. Anyway, I hope the grammar shift is useful and non-disruptive.

As always, please review!


	8. Part 7: Escape

AN: So, yeah… It's been a while. ^_^;; Still, I'm back now and have a complete plot outline. Let's hope that makes me more efficient than I have been.

~*~

~*The Art of Working Backwards*~

Part 7 – Escape

Maleficent's mouth was pulled into a thin, angry line, and fierce green fire flared briefly about her tightly-gripped staff.

"That little brat!" she snarled furiously, watching the mirror as the Large Body was torn away from its intended target. "Who would have thought that such a skittish little mouse could cause so much trouble?"

Maleficent continued watching as the young pair made it to safety and stopped for rest. Although the ensorcelled mirror did not transmit sound, the teenagers' body language was telling enough.

"Hmph. She has that boy as smitten as ever, I see." Slowly, the sorceress's scornful gaze transformed into a wicked grin. "Of course, that simply means he remains just as willing to leap blindly into danger for her." Oh, but that had been a fun weakness to play with.

Then, something interesting happened. As the ship approached and Riku looked up, Namine glanced down to adjust her dress. She froze suddenly, eyes widening. From her vantage point, all Maleficent could see was a small flicker of black. Instantly, Namine opened a whirling dark portal beneath her and fell down through it, snapping it shut before Riku could look back her way.

Maleficent's face lit up with glee. "That foolish girl makes this too easy!" With a broad sweep of her hand, the witch opened a portal of her own to pursue her quarry into darkness.

~*~

Opening a portal beneath herself had been an act of desperation, a trick she'd never tried before. Thus, it was understandable that Namine misjudged the desired distance above the ground, dropping from about six feet onto her tailbone.

"Owie…" she whimpered, rubbing her bruised posterior as she willed the portal shut.

Yeah, that move was going to take a little refining.

Brushing aside thoughts of botched portals and bruised unmentionables, Namine looked down to view the reason for her hasty exit. Visible above the neckline of her dress, wispy tendrils of darkness reached up like black claws beneath her skin, creeping up and outward from their point of origin. She could feel it, too – the sensation of numbing cold clawing up her chest and down to her stomach and curling around her sides. It was spreading so much faster, now!

Her powers! That had to be it. Not just the portals that Maleficent had taught her, but that dark chains she created. She supposed it made sense that using a Heartless's ability would speed up her transformation into one, yet the situation still bore a cruel note of irony. The very thing that had allowed her to save her best friend had led her to abandon him.

She didn't want her friends – any of her friends! – to see what was happening to her. That was why she'd stolen their memories in the first place; to spare them pain. She felt guilty for leaving Riku so suddenly, for making him wonder and worry, but he'd be alright. She'd seen the Gummi Ship approaching and knew he wouldn't be alone for long. As much as it hurt to think it, she knew he would be much safer with the others than with her.

While they'd spoken, Namine had briefly indulge herself with the thought of staying with him. She'd been alone for so long that the isolation was becoming as hard to bear as her transformation. The heart-hunger was there, but manageable. Even if her emotions were displaced, the memory and impression of happiness remained seductive; she was still part human, after all. But then she'd seen the all-too-visible reminder of the darkness breeding inside of her creeping up for all to see. The longer she lingered without a heart, the faster she became a Heartless. For the safety of those closest to her, she had to remain in darkness, keeping her silent vigil therein.

~*~

Riku was still glancing around rapidly in concern and confusion when the Gummi Ship landed nearby and his worried friends streamed out.

"RIKU!"

He was immediately distracted by shooting pain as his best friend, overcome with relief, tackled him back against the wall with all the enthusiasm of a quarterback.

"I'm so glad you're okay! I thought the heartless really got you, and then-"

"Sora," Riku hissed through clenched teeth, grimacing. "_Ribs_."

"Ah!" Sora pulled back quickly, eyes wide with concern. "Are you hurt?" His eyes swept over his best friend, taking in his battered appearance for the first time. "Donald, hurry up! Riku's hurt!"

"I'm right here," Donald complained, hands pressed tightly to the sides of his head.

"Oh," Sora ginned sheepishly. "Sorry."

"Gawrsh, Riku, you really _are_ hurt," Goofy observed.

Even though they'd all run around fighting Heartless together for the past few months, the accumulation of severe wounds had actually been pretty rare. When fighting in a group, everyone watched each other's backs, resulting in far fewer and less severe injuries. Those that did occur were quickly healed by a Cure spell or a potion. Riku was currently sporting a number of obvious bruises and still-bleeding slashes on top of his injured ribs, far more damage than was usually allowed to accumulate.

"What happened out there?" Leon asked, coming up behind Sora, Donald, and Goofy at a more sedate pace. "Did you fall off a roof?"

"Of course not!" Riku shot back indignantly, as Donald cast Cura on him, calming slightly as the spell's warmth swept through him, staunching his wounds and shrinking the pain. "I fell _through_ a roof."

"Ah." Leon smiled knowingly. If Riku still had enough energy to get indignant at some slight at his balance, he'd be just fine. "Let's get back on the ship. Everyone else wound up on the Highwind. We need to inform them that we've found Riku and arrange a rendezvous point."

"Wait a minute!" Riku protested, his mind flashing back to the vanished blonde girl. "We can't leave her behind."

"Who?" Sora asked, his voice echoing the confusion that showed on the others' faces.

"Namine!"

There was a moment of stunned silence in which Riku briefly wondered whether the looks he was receiving were indicative that he'd grown another pair of arms and started speaking gibberish.

"She was here!" Riku insisted, irritated by the skeptical looks. "She helped me escape from the heartless. Then you guys showed up and she just… disappeared."

"Donald, I want you to go get the small emergency flashlight out of the ship," Leon instructed. "Riku, I want you to tell me everything that happened up until we separated and then recite the months of the year backwards."

Riku stared for a moment. For once, Leon's orders made no sense to him whatsoever. "Leon, did you hit your head?"

"No, but you did," the older man quipped.

"_Hey!_"

"Did you see Namine before or after you fell through that roof?"

Riku frowned and hesitated before grudgingly admitting, "After."

"Exactly," Leon said. "Donald – flashlight. We need to check the dilation of his pupils. Sora, you and Goofy use the com system on the ship to contact the Highwind and let them know we've found Riku. And you…." He turned back towards Riku. "Months. Backwards."

Riku glared.

Leon glared back.

"… December, November, October…"

~*~

It happened when Namine stooped to reach her sketchbook bag, discarded behind the twisted tree in the earlier confusion. All of the Heartless were gone, lured into Hollow Bastion by the promise of hearts, leaving nothing to disguise the powerful, dark presence stepping through the wedged-open portal between the worlds.

Namine's insides constricted in what she knew was supposed to be dread. She whipped around to view her pursuer, already knowing who it was.

"So the little mouse escaped from her cage," Maleficent observed, her voice as full of false sweetness as a pitcher plant. "I suppose I'll have to build a better one this time."

Maleficent raised her hands, green fire gathering in their palms as she began her spell. Even as the gesture began, dozens of black chains tore up from the ground, lashing themselves tightly about her arms.

"This time, you won't get the chance!" Namine declared, a feeling bordering on defiance making its way down her slender heart-thread. As Maleficent snarled and her green fire began to consume the chains, Namine opened a portal behind her and darted through.

~*~

"Well, no neurological signs of a concussion," Leon concluded.

"Told you," Riku grumbled, not pleased with being poked, prodded, and questioned about his mental soundness.

"So Namine was really here?" Donald asked, taking the flashlight back from Leon.

"It is possible," the older man allowed. He trusted that Riku _believed_ he'd seen Namine, but the odds of the girl simply appearing and disappearing were negligible at best. Still, stranger things had happened.

"We have to go look for her," Riku insisted. "She's all by herself! What if the Heartless catch her?"

Leon stood with his arms crossed and eyes closed in what Riku recognized as his 'thinking' stance. "You said that she just 'disappeared.' If that's the case, then she may've had her own way out of here. Still," he added before Riku could protest the assumption, "we'll make a few passes overhead with the Gummi Ship before we meet back up with the others. If we see her below, we'll land. Fair enough?"

"I guess," Riku conceded as Sora and Goofy came back out of the Gummi Ship.

"What do you guess?" Sora asked, catching the last snatches of the conversation.

"Is Riku's head alright?" Goofy added hopefully.

"My head is fine!" Riku growled, crossing his arms. Donald snickered.

"Alright, everyone on the ship," Leon announced, trying to keep things moving. "Riku can explain what happened while we're in the air."

He ushered the motley group of heroes ahead of him onto the ship, trying not to roll his eyes at their ongoing bickering and lack of focus. Honestly, sometimes keeping these guys in line was like herding cats.

~*~

Namine didn't stop in the next dark world she ported to. In fact, she barely even looked around. As soon as she regained her bearings, she closed the portal from Starless Night behind her and opened another. She didn't know where she was going, only that it was somewhere as far from Maleficent's reach as possible. However brave she'd acted a moment ago, the sorceress still terrified her.

Two more portals: a world of black ice, and then one of arching, claw-like stone. Namine stopped to catch her breath and steady herself. Going through multiple portals so quickly was draining and disorienting. She could feel the shadow's creeping spread beneath her skin and considered stopping, but then she sensed a portal opening behind her. Without bothering to look back to confirm her suspicions, she opened another portal and forced herself to stumble through, finding herself standing atop the flat, crumbling, stone roof of what might have been a ruined temple.

A portal opened mere yards away, and Maleficent stepped out, her expression amused.

"Is that the best you can do, child?" she asked mockingly. "I gave you that little gift of yours. Why would you even think that my abilities wouldn't be far superior?"

Namine clutched her sketchbook tightly to her chest, taking an anxious step back.

"We can keep up this little game if you like," Maleficent offered with a wicked grin. "How long, I wonder, until you run out of energy? Until your body collapses? Until you become so enfeebled by exhaustion that you can no longer resist the darkness?"

Biting her lip, Namine wracked her brain for any possible avenue of escape. But Maleficent was right. How much longer could she keep this up? And how much of herself would she lose if she did? Glancing down behind her over the edge of the crumbling structure, she could see the sixty foot drop down to unforgiving stone. Her heel loosened pebbles and they clattered quickly to the ground.

A memory surfaced, one of Riku and Sora's old competitions. There was a tree house on the little island where the local children played. After they got bored of the tree house, Sora and Riku would race down to the beach. They were very competitive, often to the point of recklessness. Riku's favorite strategy had been to forgo the ladder altogether, jumping off the platform and absorbing his momentum in a roll. He'd stopped doing that after he twisted his ankle on a bad landing and had to stay off it for a week. Sora had still conceded him the victory, though, since he had touched the sand first.

The memory flashed through Namine's mind in an instant, leaving the desperate strand of an idea in its wake. She edged back nervously, keeping her eyes glued to Maleficent as if she were a venomous snake. Maleficent stepped towards her. Namine mentally prepared herself, knowing this would either work perfectly or leave her damaged beyond repair. Maybe even both. But she would not allow herself to be caught again. She would not be some witch's tool!

She stepped backwards off the roof.

A brief, gratifying image of Maleficent's pop-eyed expression flashed by before being replaced by racing stone. Focusing as well as one could while plummeting through space, Namine whipped open a series of portals beneath her – brief, unstable things with no intended destination. She grasped out for open space, for distance, and nothing else. Falling through heat, cold, air, and water until every cell in her body screamed with nausea, she finally opened a portal with only one criterion in mind: something soft. Namine had never tried to specify something like that before. It was entirely possible that she would land on – or even _in_ – some sort of rock or concrete or…

A loud "WUMPH" sounded and unfamiliar voices yelped in alarm.

'Oh, good,' Namine thought hazily, registering the pain in her skin where she'd smacked into the firm-yet-soft object. 'I didn't die.' The thought passed quickly, a single moment of relief before she lost her hold on consciousness.

~*~

AN: Whew. It feels good to get back into this. I really don't think y'all have to worry about me leaving this unfinished. I know how the story is going to go, and I doubt my brain would let me be if I just left it as thought.

When you review, I really encourage you to mention anything that doesn't make sense, loose ends you want to see tied up, etc… If I can improve the story and my writing as I go, all the better.


	9. Part 8: Backstep

AN: In this chapter, you'll get a bit more background on what happened with Namine and Maleficent, plus the introduction of some soon-to-be-key characters. Enjoy!

~*~

~*The Art of Working Backwards*~

Part 8 – Backstep

~*~

_Flashback_

~*~

"_Now, do you see this crystal, my dear?" the dark sorceress asked, holding a clear, fist-sized orb out for Namine's inspection. "These Seekers are very useful objects. They can be used to store materials that would otherwise be very difficult to transport. Observe."_

_The orb rose from Maleficent's sharp-nailed hand, glowing faintly green, before flying towards an iron torch stand near the wall. Like all other fixtures that lit the palace, it bore an eerie green fire that Namine always found unsettling. As soon as the crystal touched the stand, both objects glowed purple. The orb clacked to the ground, the torch stand no longer in sight._

_Maleficent gestured for Namine to retrieve the orb and, hesitantly, the girl obeyed. As she approached the round crystal, she saw that it now seemed to be full of billowing violet smoke. For some reason, the specific shade of purple made her think of poison. Nervously, she picked it up._

"_It looks different now," she said, walking back to where Maleficent waited._

"_Of course," the witch replied. "That's how you know it's retrieved the object you desired."_

"_How do you get it back out?" Namine asked, turning the sphere over in her hands._

"_You needn't worry about that, my dear." Maleficent plucked the orb from Namine's small hands. It glowed once more, and the torch stand reappeared beside Maleficent, green flame still burning strong. "All you have to worry about is retrieving the orbs. I will send them through portals into other worlds to collect ingredients for my spells. You will find the orbs and bring them back to me."_

"_But, why do you want me to do it? Not that I don't want to help," Namine added quickly, "but it just seems that it would be so much easier to do it yourself, since you already know how those…'Seekers' work."_

"_Sadly, when the inhabitants of those worlds see me, I'm afraid their prejudices take over," Maleficent sighed. "There aren't many worlds that will welcome a sorceress with open arms. You on the other hand…" Namine froze as a cold, pale hand stroked her hair. "Who would ever be unsettled by a sweet girl like yourself? And even if they do become…'unreasonable,' you always have your little gift."_

_Namine nodded as the invasive hand returned to its owner's side. Maleficent had explained a bit about her powers and how to access them, but she was still a bit skeptical. If she were really able to rearrange peoples' memories, wouldn't she have had some indication before? Yet she couldn't help but notice that of all the sugar-coated phrases and assurances the strange woman fed her, this assertion was always spoken with a greedy sincerity that Namine instinctively trusted above the witch's promises._

~*~

_Finding the first Seeker had been easy. Namine had stepped through a portal into a cozy little cabin with seven small beds and almost immediately found the smoke-filled crystal on the wooden floor. Maleficent hadn't told her what exactly she would be fetching, and as she stepped through the portal that had appeared when she picked up the Seeker, Namine could only hope that it wouldn't be something the owners of the cottage would miss._

_Her second foray was more of a challenge. She'd found herself in a beautiful palace courtyard. For a moment, she'd forgotten her mission, quietly enjoying the peaceful night air, the sounds of a dance drifting from the elegant building, and the beautiful fountain, flowers, and hedges of the garden._

_Then the guards spotted her._

_Namine had wished Maleficent kept the portals open instead of closing them behind her. As she darted around the corner of the building, Namine put her powers over memory to their first test. She focused on the two guards, on their hearts, following the shallow connection between her heart and theirs to scratch the surface of their memories. On instinct, she felt some link of theirs stamped with her own image and impression and quickly severed it._

_Peeking nervously around the corner, she watched as the two men glanced at each other in bleary confusion, shrugged, and walked back to their original post. Namine took a moment to catch her breath, which was by then as shaky as her trembling hands. Summoning her courage, she made her way cautiously back towards the place where Maleficent's portal had originally left her. Seeing a faint, purplish glint in the shadow of the marble stairs leading down from the ballroom, Namine hurried forward._

_The crystal sphere lay half-hidden by the grass beside the steps. As she knelt to pick it up, she heard steps approaching and stopped, pressing herself flat against the side of the stairs. The steps paused halfway down, and Namine feared she was spotted. But then they continued, faster than before._

"_Guards!" an authoritative, yet appealing voice demanded. "I'm looking for a girl who passed by here just a moment ago."_

_Namine went rigid._

"_She would have been wearing a slipper to match this one."_

_Curiosity made Namine push herself up just enough to peek over the stairs. A well-dressed young gentleman with dark hair was holding a shoe that looked like it was made of sparkling glass for the guards' inspection._

"_Our apologies, my prince, but we've seen no such maiden this evening."_

_In no mood to press her luck unnecessarily, Namine ducked back down and picked up the Seeker. Her relief was palpable when a portal promptly opened behind her, allowing her to dart back through._

~*~

"_Do you think you could teach me how to make those portals?" Namine asked, handing the Seeker from the palace over to Maleficent. "I'd feel better going out if I knew I could get back on my own."_

_The witch's face lit with glee as the orb was handed to her, then cooled to a calculating grin as she considered the girl's request._

"_I suppose I could grant you that power," she said, as if mulling it over, "if you'll do something for me in return."_

~*~

_End Flashback_

~*~

Strange things were said to happen in the old mansion outside of Twilight Town. Local children often told stories about the ghosts of the previous owners who supposedly haunted the groaning walls to this very day. Yet in spite of – or, more likely, because of – such tales, the children often spent the night there on dares and came back with chilling stories of voices on the wind and faces seen in shadows.

"Fatty was right! This place really is haunted."

Of course, no one had ever seen or heard so substantial a sign of supernatural activity as the two boys who had just fled into the hall after what was probably an angry poltergeist made its presence known with a mighty _wumph!_

"Axel! For the last time, his name is Pence."

A groan from the next room had them both pressed back against the wall in tense silence. Axel leaned to the side, peeking slowly around the doorjamb. But the curtains in the room were drawn, blocking out the moonlight, and the abandoned building hadn't had anyone to pay the electricity bill for ages.

Axel felt a flashlight being pressed into his hand, and gave his companion an unseen smile of gratitude. He flicked on the switch, and a beam of light illuminated the hardwood floor, slipping across their parallel sleeping bags before landing on the musty old couch towards the back of the room.

"What the hell?" Axel muttered to himself. He stepped back into the room, curiosity overcoming fear at the sight of a person passed out on the sagging piece of furniture.

"What is it?" the smaller blonde asked, trailing behind his companion as he approached the couch.

"It's a girl… I think," Axel replied uncertainly. "Hey, Roxas, you took a first aid class in school, right?"

"Yeah, is there something wrong wi-- Oh, man…"

"Yeah, pretty much…"

The girl on the couch was completely limp and still, showing no signs of life except for one hand clutching a bag to her chest. More disturbing, however, were the shadowy tendrils twisting their way up her neck and down her limbs to her wrists and ankles as if they were in the process of devouring her.

"I don't think we ever covered _that_ in health class."

"Shouldn't you, like, take a pulse or something?"

"Are you kidding? What if it's contagious?"

"Like an infection? Looks more like a tattoo to me."

"Does she look like the tattooing type to you?" Roxas asked with a raised brow, gesturing at the white sundress and pretty blue sandals.

"Maybe she was going through a rebellious phase." Axel shrugged, pointing to the upside-down triangle tattoos under his eyes.

"That's one hell of a rebellious phase."

"Look, just take the pulse already! I don't think she's breathing."

"Really?" Roxas frowned, holding his palm just above the girl's nose and mouth. "Shit! You're right!"

"I am?" Axel's eyes widened in surprise. He hadn't actually expected her to be that badly off.

"Go get your cell phone and call an ambulance," Roxas instructed, taking the flashlight from his companion. "I'm going to try to find a pulse." Two fingers went to what Roxas hoped was the pulse point on the motionless girl's throat. The coolness of her skin was alarming, as was his inability to find a heartbeat. "Crap, maybe it's closer to the jaw?" Roxas groaned. Was this some kind of divine punishment for not paying attention in health class?

Blue eyes snapped open.

"Whoa!" Roxas jerked back in surprise. The flashlight beam wavered. The girl sat up, her moves as slow and calculated as a wary stray.

"Hey! Nice going, Rox!"

"I didn't even do anything," the blond protested before returning his attention to their odd guest. "Good to see you awake. For a minute there, we thought you were a goner."

The girl stared straight back at him with vague, unblinking eyes. If she'd heard, she gave no indication. Roxas found the odd fixedness of her stare deeply unnerving.

"Umm… Can you even understand what I'm saying?"

"Found my cell phone!" Axel announced triumphantly. The girl's pale blue eyes snapped to focus on him, and he flinched under the sharp gaze. "Err… So, should I still call that ambulance?"

"That's probably a good idea. She seems pretty disorient- Hey!"

In a flash of movement, Roxas was knocked back to the floor with the girl on his chest. The flashlight clattered aside.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" he demanded. Something dark and strong whipped out of the floor, lashing him down.

"_Time to feed…_" the creature above him said in a hissing whisper. Roxas felt his face pale and his insides chill as the meaning of the words sunk in.

"HEY!" came Axel's furious shout, followed by a cell phone chucked right at the creature's head. "Get off of him!"

The phone made contact audibly, knocking a startled noise from the girl-thing. She fell to the side, and Roxas's dark bindings immediately vanished. Seizing upon the opportunity, Roxas leapt back, grabbing the fallen flashlight and shining the beam on his attacker. From her position crouched on the floor, the girl looked up at him, trembling and blinking like one awaking from a particularly disturbing dream.

"C'mon, Rox! Let's get out of here," Axel urged, grabbing the younger's wrist. But Roxas wasn't quite ready to leave.

"What _are_ you?" he demanded of the girl-thing. "Some kind of monster?" Ghosts weren't solid. Humans couldn't summon chains from shadows or survive when their body temperature matched the room. And it would certainly take a monster to look at a person and think 'dinner.'

Slowly, the creature stood, wincing at the light in its eyes.

"I'm…" she began shakily, her voice more human-sounding now. "I'm what's left."

Before either boy could ask for clarification, she turned to the side and raised her hand, causing a solid disc of swirling shadow to appear. She stepped into it, and it quickly shrank shut, leaving the two shaken, flummoxed adolescents in her wake.

"What the hell?" Axel summed up, sweeping his flashlight around the room as if he expected her to pop back out of any unwatched shadow. The beam landed on the floor, illuminating the only proof that the girl-thing's appearance had been anything more than a nightmare: the sky blue bag the girl had been clutching with the corner of a sketchbook peeking out of it.

~*~

Namine fell to her knees as soon as she set foot in the world's dark mirror. Her entire body trembled with the desire to feed – an empty, exhausted, wanting feeling. She raised her hands up in front of her face and was horrified to see that the twisting darkness had advanced well down her arms, almost to her hands.

"No, no, no, no…" she whispered over and over again, as if her desperate chanting might somehow push back the spread. It was too soon! And worse, she'd attacked someone and almost eaten their heart! Was she already that far gone? Her gambit had saved her from Maleficent's clutches, but at what cost?

Her limbs shook violently as she jerked and stumbled to her feet, driven by a desperate need to seek ad devour. Her eyes darted about, taking in the landscape in snaps and flashes. Clumps of barren trees stood together on rolling ground. Interrupted snatches of stone walls wandered aimlessly through. Little heartless Shadows crawled silently and purposefully through the fragmented echo of a world.

A tiny light froze her.

It had drifted down like a snowflake out of nowhere, a little speck that engaged every modicum of her focus and attention. Every muscle was rigid, like a hound pointing at a hidden pheasant. In the periphery of her vision, she saw the Shadows regarding the light-speck with similar intent, igniting a fierce instinct within her.

Before the little light could drift low enough for the Shadows to claim it, Namine lashed out with one of her chains, snatching the light back into her waiting grasp with the speed of a viper's strike. She cupped the precious speck in both hands and pressed it to her chest in a gesture as instinctive as swallowing and felt the light absorb into her.

It was like a first breath of fresh air after being locked in a tomb. Namine sighed shakily in relief. She didn't feel quite as weak now, and the edge of her hunger was dulled. Reason began to poke through instinct and she looked up, trying to discern the light's source.

Stars! This was the first dark world where she'd seen stars in the sky. But after a moment of staring, she realized that the stars were moving. While new ones winked shyly into existence, others drifted closer until Namine understood that they weren't stars at all. They were more little light-specks falling sparsely down from the heavens to feed the waiting heartless that scampered about below.

Another speck fell closer, and while it was still ten feet above her head, Namine whipped a long chain upwards to snatch it like she had with the first. Again, she pressed the little light to her chest to be absorbed with a smile of pure satisfaction. Craning her head back, she watched to see if any others would fall close enough for her to snag them.

Gazing upwards with eyes less clouded by hunger and instinct, she could see that not all of the sky bred the tiny light specks. There were dark areas where no light bloomed. A single large swatch of sky seemed to be responsible for sending forth all of the life-giving morsels. It took her a long moment to recognize the shape of this patch for what it was.

It was a keyhole.

~*~

AN: Yes, the Seekers are my own invention. As we get into the cosmology of the worlds and Maleficent's origin, you'll see even more of my personal theories and inventions coming into play. Hopefully, this will add to the reader's experience rather than detracting. As always, reviews are much appreciated! In fact, it was the knowledge that some people were eagerly awaiting the next installment that prompted me finish editing this last night (although I couldn't post the file until today, because the site was being finicky XP). 3 Thanks for the motivation, guys!


	10. Part 9: Elucidation

AN: Yes, I've been extremely slow. Feel free to flog me with a wet noodle. But as I've said before, this story WILL get finished. I have a lot more story ideas I want to write, but I wouldn't feel right starting them without finishing this first. Hang in there, dear readers!

~*~

~*The Art of Working Backwards*~

Part 9 – Elucidation

"And when I looked back, she was just..._gone,_" Riku finished, the hands resting in his lap closing on air. Seated between Sora and Kairi on bits of rubble, Riku could feel the questioning eyes of the reunited group upon him. After the two ships had made contact, they'd quickly identified a relatively open, heartless-free area where they could converse and plan more easily. They now sat or stood in a loose circle between the protective bulks of the ships.

"When you say 'gone'..." Kairi began tentatively.

"He means _gone,_" Leon put in, drawing attention away from Riku. "We made a thorough pass over the entire area within a mile radius. We even used the new infrared scanner Cid installed. Nothing."

"You sure there's not just somethin' wrong with yer noggin'?" Cid drawled around his most recent cigarette, leaning casually back against the Highwind.

Riku snapped a glare his way. "Why do people keep asking me that? Leon even made me do a stupid concussion test!"

"It's not that we don't believe you," Kairi soothed. "But it's not exactly normal for people to just appear and disappear like that."

"Yeah, because fighting heartless and flying around in ships made of gummi blocks is just so normal," Riku grumbled sarcastically.

Kairi laughed. "Point taken."

"So, if Namine's the one who messed up our memories, does that mean she's going to fix them?" Sora asked hopefully. For him the worst part was the guilt over having forgotten a friend, regardless of whether or not it was his fault. Having known him so long, it was strange for Riku to realize anew how very seriously Sora took his friendships.

"I...think so. She was pretty vague," Riku admitted, wishing he had more information to offer. "We'll find out sooner or later anyway."

"In the meantime, we've got bigger problems," Leon said, shifting the subject back to the matter at hand. "Maleficent was the one who originally set the heartless loose in our world. If they're back, then there's a chance that she is, too."

"But we defeated her!" Sora protested. "We all took her out before we came back to Traverse Town."

Leon shrugged. "I guess she found a way to come back. Either that, or someone else came along and decided to shatter the barrier between this world and the realm of darkness. Either way, things just got a lot more dangerous. We're going to need a new base of operations, something defensible."

"It's not that easy when the heartless can just pop out of the ground," Riku mused with a frown. "And with the way they climb, you'll need more than just some good walls."

His mind flashed back to his all-too-recent encounter with the monsters, bringing back the raw sensation of fear and cold hands clawing at his limbs. Normally he loved fighting, but not when he was so badly outnumbered that he had to run. Injured pride pained him more than mere physical injury ever could.

"Say, how did you fellers keep those heartless out of the First District in Traverse Town?" Goofy asked.

"For some reason, the heartless have a harder time appearing in places that aren't already saturated with darkness," Leon explained. "By keeping that one area free of heartless, we made it harder for new ones to come in. Any that did were quickly taken care of."

"I always thought of it like weeding," Aerith added. "The more weeds in your garden, the faster they'll spread. If you get rid of most of them, you'll have fewer new ones."

"Weeds. Great." Riku grumbled. "Now all we need is some herbicide and we're set."

"Well, now," Cid drawled thoughtfully. "That, we might be able to do."

Leon turned towards the pilot, his interest piqued. "What did you have in mind?"

"You remember Merlin's old place? The old kook managed to keep holed up there for a good long while, in spite of those hordes of heartless. Asked him 'bout it once and it seems he had some pretty good protective spells set in the foundations of that old shack. Wasn't quite enough to keep him safe when the world got swamped, but in our case, it'd prolly do just fine. If the old spells still work, that is."

"It's better than nothing," Leon said, straightening up. "It's almost daytime now. As close as this place gets to daytime, at least. We're moving out. Everybody to the ships. Cid, you lead the way. We'll land as close as we can, fight our way through, and dig in. We'll iron out details once we get the lay of the land. Let's move!"

"Alright!" Sora jumped up enthusiastically. "Come on, Riku! This is going to be great."

"Just try to keep up," Riku baited, listening to his friend's indignant sputtering with plain amusement. As they headed up the ramp into the gummi ship, Riku kept up the casual banter and teasing. He kept his right hand out of sight in his pocket, tracing the familiar lines of the star charm.

~*~

"What's this?" Roxas moved the beam of his hastily-retrieved flashlight to overlap Axel's, duly illuminating the recently-fled monster's dropped bag. Glancing warily from side to side, as if expecting the creature to return, Roxas stepped forward and knelt to lift the forgotten article.

"Hey, Rox?" Axel prompted. "This would be the part where we grab our stuff and get the hell out of here before that thing comes back." He didn't know what that freaky girl-thing was, but he didn't see any reason why they should stick around and find out. Axel was all for risk-taking as long as they were _known_ risks. Drive too fast? Sure. Play with fire? Of course! Mess around with weird, supernatural, voodoo stuff? No, thank you!

"And go where?" Roxas countered, walking back over with the bagged sketchbook tucked under his arm. "We'd have to walk through the woods – which we got lost in twice just coming here, might I add – just to get back to town."

"Um, hello? That thing almost ate you!" Axel waved his arms in emphasis, causing his flashlight's beam to dance wildly. "I'd rather be lost than monster food."

Roxas sighed shakily, letting Axel tug him closer. "Hey, you think I'm not freaked out, too? That was like something right out of The Exorcist. I'd just rather be scared and know where I am than scared and lost and cold in the middle of the night."

"Fine, fine," Axel conceded, wrapping his arms around the smaller boy. He could feel a slight suppressed tremor in Roxas's form, but knew better than to mention it. "We'll stay in the haunted house of freakiness and scary things."

"Besides, if anymore monsters show up, you can always just chuck your cell phone at them," Roxas teased. "That thing's better than garlic on vampires!"

Axel chuckled and lightly kissed his boyfriend's forehead. "Alright, already! I'm convinced. Man, I can't believe this place is really haunted. Your friends are going to freak when we tell them. _If_ they even believe us!"

"Well, it's not like our 'visitor' didn't leave evidence," Roxas commented, stepping back from the circle of Axel's arms and pulling the sketchbook free of its protective bag.

"What's a monster doing with a spiral notebook?" Axel raised an eyebrow, shining his light down on the pages as Roxas flipped open the cover. The blond's eyebrows rose incredulously.

"Drawing pretty flowers, apparently." On the first page in bright colored pencil were a myriad of sketches of tropical birds and flowers. A palm tree stood to one side with the bark only half-textured in.

"That's..." Axel groped for the right word. "...unexpected."

"No kidding." Roxas flipped to the next page. Axel leaned over his shoulder to get a better look. The images ranged from pretty and pleasant to horrifying and surreal. All were carefully and skillfully rendered in colored pencil. As Roxas turned more and more pages, however, the colors grew fewer, as if the artist were running out of colored lead. Eventually, everything went to grayscale.

"Does this seem weirdly symbolic to you?" Roxas asked, referring to the loss of color.

Axel shrugged. "Like I'd know. Symbolism isn't exactly my thing."

"Which is why you completely bombed your last English essay."

"Yeah, yeah," Axel grumbled. He blinked as Roxas turned the page. "Damn, check out that scary lady with the horns. Who do you think she is?"

"How should I know?" Roxas asked, continuing his perusal. "She sure pops up a lot."

"She's the reason I'm like this now."

Axel and Roxas yelped simultaneously. The sketchbook flapped to the floor, and two flashlights focused their beams on the petite intruder.

"C-could you please shine those a little bit lower?" Namine asked, wincing at the light shining in her sensitive eyes.

"How do you keep appearing and disappearing like that?" Axel demanded, pulling Roxas back by his shoulder. "And what the _hell_ are you?!"

Namine flinched at the sharp tone. "I w-was human not t-too long ago." In the face of such harsh confrontation, a nervous stutter crept back into her speech. "I... I'm not really sure what I am now. I'm very, very sorry for a-attacking you. I really didn't mean to. I-it's just that everything's changing s-so quickly that I'm having a hard time c-controlling-"

"Whoa, whoa! Okay! Just stop crying!" Axel urged frantically, one hand raised in supplication while the other lowered the accusing flashlight beam. He had no problem putting himself between Roxas and mortal danger, but crying girls were not his area of expertise.

"I'm n-not c-crying," Namine protested, relieved to have the light out of her eyes. "I j-just stutter when I g-get nervous."

"Well, it looks like you also leak saltwater from your eyes when you're nervous," Roxas observed. Namine raised a hand to her cheek and found warm, wet tears clinging to her skin.

"Oh! S-sorry!" Namine rubbed the moisture briskly away. She hadn't even realized she was feeling enough to cry. Her connection to her heart must have grown frail, indeed.

"So, wait a minute." Axel juggled the flashlight around and retrieved the sketchbook. "You're saying that this freaky old lady right here is the one that made you all..." He fished for a word that wouldn't make the tears start up again.

"Like this," Roxas saved him, indicating Namine's shadow-laced arms with his flashlight.

Namine nodded, looking down at the floor, folding her arms in close to her body self-consciously. "She's the one who forced me to do this, although the final decision was my own."

Axel and Roxas exchanged a glance. Now that she was no longer moving oddly or trying to eat anybody, this not-human girl wasn't exactly intimidating. Sympathy came reflexively, a gut-level response to a small, scared girl trying valiantly to remain composed.

"Maybe you should try explaining things from the beginning," Roxas suggested, taking the sketchbook from Axel and handing it back to Namine.

The three sat on the floor with Namine across from the two boys and the flashlights propped up on crumpled jackets between them to provide some ambient light. For a moment, Namine stalled by flipping nervously through her sketchbook. She wasn't used to being the center of attention and her nerves left her uncertain where to start. Well, she did have the story in her hands...

"When I was very young, I washed up on the shore of Destiny Islands," she began tentatively, holding the sketchbook open to an early image of a beach with assorted colorful birds and flowers sketched around the edges, the one Roxas had first opened to. "I couldn't remember anything about who I was or where I came from – nothing but my name – but the people there were kind enough to take me in. And these are my best friends-" She flipped to the next page where two boys were sketched sitting on a dock. "-Sora and Riku. It was a wonderful place. But then..."

The next page revealed a full-page drawing of the night sky playing host to a ball of orange and purple flame, the ground below riven and cracked with yellow-eyed monsters reaching out of the crevices. Namine had to admit that not all of the details were in place, but she'd captured the feeling of the event quite well.

"...the heartless came."

"Heartless?" Roxas prompted.

"Creatures from the darkness," Namine explained, "that devour peoples' hearts. Have you ever seen them before?"

"No, I'd say we've been pretty lucky in that department," Axel said with a grimace. "So, uh... what did they do? Besides, you know, the whole 'eating peoples' hearts' thing."

"I'm not entirely sure," Namine admitted. "I was sucked into the darkness before the islands were totally overwhelmed. No one really knows what happens to worlds that are taken by the heartless, but as of now, there is no such place as Destiny Islands. That world is simply... gone. Faded into nothing."

"The whole world?" Axel asked incredulously. "You mean the whole thing just went..." He waved a hand in the air. "Poof?"

"Something like that." A few more pages flipped by, images of architecture styled in an unreal mixture of medieval and futuristic motifs, yellow-eyed shadow monsters, and green fire. "I woke up in a place called Hollow Bastion." She stopped on an image of the horned, robed woman standing before a mirror. The entire image was ringed by sketches of heartless in various shapes and forms.

"That's where I met Maleficent, a sorceress. She was powerful enough that even the heartless obeyed her. She told me that if I helped her she'd help me find my friends."

"And you believed her?" Axel raised an eyebrow. "That hag has 'evil supervillain' written all over her."

"I didn't really have much of a choice." Namine confessed. "Or at least, it didn't feel like I did. I was stuck there, and I wasn't strong enough to even think of upsetting her."

"So, _did_ she help you find them?" Roxas asked.

"In a way…" Namine's fingers toyed uncertainly with the pages. "The next time I saw Riku and Sora, they'd come to defeat Maleficent. She'd been doing some pretty bad things, and had even kidnapped one of their new friends. That's when I found out why Maleficent had bothered keeping me around in the first place." Namine turned to one of the last pages in her sketchbook: a door in the shape of a heartless crest surrounded by seven stars. "Maleficent wanted to open a door to a place called Kingdom Hearts. I don't know much about it, but supposedly, doing so would have allowed her to acquire even greater powers over darkness. The spell to open the door required the hearts of seven specific maidens to be present. Mine was one of them."

"So, she cut your heart out?" Axel's expression combined disgust and fascination as only a teenage boy could.

"Actually, I did," Namine corrected, unconsciously averting her gaze. "When I found out what she was doing, I tried to stop it. Maleficent needed all seven hearts to be present for the ritual to work. So, I forced my own heart out." Namine paused, tensing briefly, trying not to remember the unnatural shattering sensation. "I'm not sure how I did it, and I'm not sure how I survived. I do know that my heart still exists, as does Maleficent."

Axel and Roxas shared a glance. This was all so out of their element that it was hard to know how to respond. Before this night, monsters and sorceresses and other worlds had been the stuff of fantasy. They'd gone to spend the night in a haunted mansion and had wound up in an alternate reality.

"Soo…" Axel trailed off, doing his best to follow. "Did you have the wicked tattoos before you did the whole heart-ripping thing?"

"They aren't tattoos," Namine corrected, self-consciously tucking her limbs in closer. "It's the darkness." She flipped to the last page of her sketchbook. "Spreading."

For the first time, Namine herself was the central figure, thoroughly sketched out from head to toe. In the margins around her were images from the beginning of the book: flowers and birds and the two boys. She was wearing a simple dress and sandals, and her eyes were closed. It was the last picture she'd drawn before she'd started working on restoring her friends' memories.

Throughout her ordeal, drawing had been therapy of a sort – a way for her to safely express her fears and longings and everything else she had to keep under control to stay alive under Maleficent's gaze. While working on this last drawing, Namine had been in something resembling shock. Drawing had been her way of dealing with the traumatic events, of reminding herself it was all real.

In the middle of the Namine-sketch's chest, a black circle had been drawn in with pencil strokes so heavy that the paper had begun to tear.

~*~

AN: Phew! Small victories. I got hung up on the chapter for quite a while. I expect I'll be much more efficient on the next one. I know how this is going to end, but I feel like there are a lot of loose ends to tie up. Well, nothing to do but press on!


End file.
